


a little dark, a little gloomy, and as always, full of dead people

by dewshi



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Animal Death, Character Turned Into a Ghost, Child Abuse, Cussing, Eventual Happy Ending, Humanstuck, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Internalized Homophobia, Low-Key Beetlejuice AU, M/M, Not gonna spoil it, Rating May Change, Slow Burn, i bet i'm forgetting something and i'll rush to add it 5 minutes after posting, probably, wink - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-08
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2020-11-27 22:47:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 12
Words: 81,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20956160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dewshi/pseuds/dewshi
Summary: The round-shades guy starts to trek up the hill to the door. You move away from the window and go halfway up the stairs to watch him enter. The door clicks open and creaks loudly as it does. The very first thing that you hear is a disappointed groan. “Oh, this place is just a shithole.”You immediately don’t like this person.Karkat Vantas (d. 1988), is facing something of a conundrum. After an unceremonious death at the ripe age of 17, he's stuck in his house in Assfuck Nowhere, Ohio. With the threat of Double Death looming over him, Karkat must actually take it seriously when a young man named Dave Strider moves into his now-decrepit house. Will he learn to tolerate the existence of this insufferable Texan? Or will he suffer eternally at what he believes is a form of hell crafted specifically for him? Only time will tell. And you, delightful viewers, will have the front seat to watch.





	1. Prologue: Invisible

**Author's Note:**

> haha, fooled you, all my "future projects" were actually just homestuck! get ready for this shit
> 
> this is just. this fic is my baby now. i've been having a ton of fun prepping it for posting and god i really want to get back in the ao3 game! i have thoughts to share, dammit! this fic was pretty heavily inspired by the recent trend of cult classics turned musicals like beetlejuice and heathers, plus other recent 80s-inspired media like stranger things? granted, i wasn't alive in the 80s, so most of my 80s knowledge is from movies and frantic googling. 
> 
> regardless! i don't think this fic will be a magnum opus of any sort. probably just an odd 5-10ish chapters of light-hearted gay nonsense. i hope you enjoy!
> 
> p.s. if you recognize the title quote without looking it up, you're my hero.

Your name is Karkat Vantas, and your life is hell. You’re stuck with your uncle in the middle of nowhere, Ohio. Your uncle is, well, an asshole. He’s always been that way, for as long as you can remember. But he’s your only living relative and he’s better than the adoption system your country has to offer. You just have to survive until you’re old enough to get out of this hellhole town. 

You live in Prospit, a small rural town that mostly consists of tumbleweeds and tractors. Tumbleweeds and Tractors, by the way, is a good name for a Prospitian folk-rock band you never want to hear about. The whole of the town consists of a diner, a few stores, and a church you only go to because you like not getting beat the fuck up in your own house. Luckily for you, Prospit has a school as well. The perfect place to be convinced of how much of a social outcast you are! 

You'd have offed yourself long ago, but you never got around to it. Now you’re seventeen years old. You’re this close to finishing high school and getting a scholarship to some college across the country. You want nothing more than to leave Prospit to rot behind you. You’re a good student. Abrasive to teachers and the opposite of popular among students, but still, you bring home nothing but As and Bs. Studying is a good way to distract yourself from all the shit in your life. Plus, when you were younger, bringing home good grades used to get your uncle to loosen up even a little bit. Not anymore though, obviously.

“An A- from chemistry? What am I raising, a cow?” he says with poison in his voice, sitting at the kitchen table as you carry the laundry basket across the living room. 

“A cow with a higher IQ than yours,” you mutter. 

“What’d you say?” he growls. The tone of his voice communicates that he had a bad day at work. You’d be better off pushing his buttons today. Actually, you’d be better off not breathing today. The dust that you create in the house by being alive might be too much for his liking.

“Nothing,” you say loudly, slamming the lid of the washing machine closed. It whirrs to life and thankfully drowns out your uncle’s insults. Your living arrangement is simple. If you do your chores, he’ll limit the amount of time he spends yelling at you and slamming your face to the wall to about two hours. With the clothes washing and the dishes done, you have a bit of free time. Time which you will spend doing homework.

You hear your uncle relocate to the living room to watch TV, so you sneak out of the laundry room and up the stairs. The house is too small for you to have a real bedroom, so your den is the attic. Cramped, dusty and crawling with bugs. You feel real good about living here. A crappy cot covered in blankets and pillows in one corner. An even crappier desk standing precariously on four thin legs in another. Every wall is plastered in movie posters and every open surface covered in romance novels. A faintly flickering lamp and some textbooks sit on the desk. On the bed, a black backpack that’s going to cause you lasting back problems. On the ceiling above your bed is a hatch. You can just about reach it and open it if you stand on your tippy-toes on your bed. If you do, a rope ladder falls. You can get to the roof with it if you ever need to.

A forgotten, half-broken VHS player, your uncle’s old TV and a collection of romance movies on VHS lie beneath the desk, collecting dust. Through the large open window, you see the forest behind the house. You used to go in there and walk around when you had time, but now you don’t have the energy anymore. Now you just rewatch your cassettes over and over and dream of what it would be like to have that kind of romance. The kind where someone would save you, someone equally as broken. Someone with whom you could run away and leave this town in the dust. The cold November sky outside is covered in thick, pale gray clouds. 

The light flowing into the room is weak, but it’s strong enough to illuminate the final wall of the room. There, a thin table leans against the wall with a complex miniature of the whole town on it. With no friends and no hobbies, stuck in your room, you needed something to do. You ended up starting a project. You took old plastic containers your uncle wouldn’t miss and spent what little savings you had on Legos and fake grass from the crafts store. And so, a tiny Prospit was built in your room, little by little.

At first, it was just your house and the surrounding forest, each tree and path carefully constructed from cut-up cardboard and twigs. Slowly, you expanded to the school, the playground, the old people’s home. You built the train station and the tracks and the bridge where the highway crosses it. You built the old mine at the edge of town. As the years passed, the miniature Prospit grew more and more complex and realistic. You made miniatures of familiar faces from school and placed them in places you knew they hung out without you. You walked for hours tracing the route of the creek in the woods and adjusted the miniature to match. And, in a fit of desperation, you marked down locations you knew your uncle couldn’t find you, places you could hide on the day he finally snapped.

You sit down at your desk and open one of the textbooks in front of you. You’ve barely managed to do so when a voice calls your name from the first floor, followed by lots of cursing. Cursing which sounds like it’s rapidly approaching the attic door. “Your selfish fuckery has gone too far, kid- Does an old man have to live in this day and age without some goddamn milk to put in his coffee, huh? You fucking-”

The milk. You knew you forgot to buy something when you went to the store today. You scramble up and realize you forgot to lock the door of your room. Your uncle barges in, rage in his eyes, face red and an empty bottle of beer in hand. Oh, shit, he’s been drinking, too? This day is not going well for you. He throws the bottle at the wall and it shatters. You’re going to have to clean that up, you think for under a second before his hand descends on your face.

You fall to the ground, face stinging while he spits venom at you. His favorite team lost at sports and you forgot his milk at the store and you only got an A- and blah, blah, blah. You try to sit up, but he kicks you in the stomach. The air rushes out of you and you lean your head against the desk, unable to do more than sit up. Your uncle grabs you by the front of your sweater and pulls your face to his. His breath smells of alcohol. Looking at his eyes, you know this isn’t normal anger. He’s out for blood right now.

Those locations you marked down might be needed sooner than you’d thought.

“You gonna apologize, kid?” he growls. You scrunch your nose at the stench.

You stutter breathily, angrily, trying to get him off your case without giving him what you know he doesn’t deserve. He drops you to the floor, knocking the air out of you again. The back of your head hits the edge of the desk painfully. As your uncle keeps ranting things you can’t hear, you struggle to stand up. He hits you over the back of your head and you stumble to the window. A sharp gust of cold air on your face does nothing to soothe the pain. You turn around and try to brace yourself for a hit you know is coming. 

You fail. His hand comes to a death grip around your neck. You gasp and struggle to no avail. He holds you with your entire head hanging out of the window, mumbling something violent and incomprehensible. You’re going to black out. You can’t let him get that satisfaction. You use your last strength to kick him in the balls. His hand comes away as he yells. In the scuffle, he pushes you forward. You barely have time to realize it before your center of gravity is outside of the window.

You scramble to grab your uncle, the curtains, the window frame, anything-

You’re in a freefall for just a few seconds, but it feels like forever. There’s no life flashing before your eyes. Just the realization of what’s happening. Cold, stinging air whizzes in your ears. Strands of black hair in your face. Your legs above you. Your uncle’s face, rage being hidden under a layer of shock. Nobody’s going to miss you. They won’t even know you’re gone.

Sharp pain in the base of your neck.


	2. Lifestyle Change

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so of course i couldn't leave the prologue there for longer than 24 hours. i'm just really excited to share this fic with the world :3c the next chapter will, however, take a bit longer to come out. it's done, but you know what they say about too much of a good thing
> 
> i've seen a lot of fics about ghost dave- humanstuck fics about ghost dave, non-humanstuck fics about ghost dave, fics where they're both ghosts, but i haven't seen a lot of ghost karkat, and i think that's a niche that NEEDS to be filled so i'm filling it now

The cuckoo clock goes off six times.

You’re sitting on the couch in the living room, rubbing the back of your neck. It hurts like hell, and you don’t know why. You hear the back door open and close, which means your uncle has gone out. That’s quite unusual. Normally he hangs out in the living room and sends you outside to do shit. You get up to investigate and lean your forehead against the window. You just catch him walking away from view carrying a shovel. Where the hell is he going? He never does yardwork. Isn’t there a football game on TV right now? Well, as long as he’s not in the house, you guess.

What are you even doing downstairs? You should go up and do schoolwork or something. Work on tiny Prospit, maybe. You turn your head and your neck pops loudly. Jesus, ow, why does it hurt so much? Actually, your whole body hurts, for some reason. You try to shake it off and walk towards the kitchen. If you’re down here and your uncle isn’t in the house, you might as well grab something from the fridge. You don’t feel hungry, but maybe you have a protein bar or some dried fruit to snack on or something.

There are some empty beer bottles on the table. Has your uncle been drinking? Wait. You feel like you had that thought just a little bit ago, and he’d been drunk. He wasn’t in the living room, though, so why were you? Wait. Okay. Wait. Something’s not right here. You feel dizzy. You turn around and walk towards the bathroom. You need to wash your face.

You open the bathroom and look up and-

Where the fuck is your reflection?

Wait. Wait. Wait. No. Can mirrors not work? Is it possible for a mirror to stop working?

You straight up don’t have a reflection. You turn around and look behind you. The bathroom looks normal. You turn around. The same sight greets you in the mirror. You pick up a toothbrush and wave it around. Its reflection appears to be floating in midair. Where in the shit is your reflection? For real. You’re starting to freak out for fucking real.

Forgetting all about your plan to wash your face, you rush out of the bathroom and up to your room. The door is open, which is supremely disconcerting. You always keep it closed, always, always. You jump up the stairs two steps at a time, ignoring the painful lolling around your head is doing. It feels like a Jack-in-the-box inside the box. The attic window is open as well. In the distance, the forest looms. It’s begun to rain outside, just a light drizzle. The curtains flutter in the wind. Something jogs in your memory. Whirling in your ears, the window moving further away. Two seconds of hurtling fear, and then darkness. The room is silent.

You go to the window, but your uncle is nowhere to be seen in the yard. Hopping up on the bed and ignoring the complaints of your upper back and neck, you reach up and pull down the hatch. The ladder falls, allowing you to climb to the roof. The November wind is cold and unforgiving. You have to squint to see your uncle. You can just make him out, far in the distance, doing something with the shovel. Then it hits you. He’s burying something.

You leap down three spokes at a time. Haphazardly, you toss up the ladder and slam the hatch closed. Thoughts rush through your head a mile a minute. You race down the stairs to the back door with a growing sense of terror gnawing at the pit of your stomach like a hungry flock of piranhas. The mirror not working- your uncle, burying something in the yard. You feel light-headed as you pull the door open and try to run through.

This, in hindsight, is a mistake on your part.

You run headfirst into some sort of invisible wall and get thrown backward. You exclaim as you fall to the ground. Your already aching body complains louder. You pull yourself up using the table in the hallway and try again, with less velocity this time. No help. Something stops you in the doorway, like a forcefield of some sort that keeps you from getting out of the house.

“Uncle Crabdad?” you ask, pushing your whole body weight against the transparent barrier in an attempt to get out. Nobody seems to hear you. You try again, yelling as loud as you can. “Uncle Crabdad!?”

No response. Why is this happening to you? What does “this” even mean? 

Your uncle treks back towards the house. He tosses the shovel into the dead leaves by the porch. You stand in the doorway, eyes wide and muscles frozen. Your instincts are telling you to move so that he doesn’t get mad and push you out of his way, but you find yourself unable. You search his face for clues. He doesn’t look at you. You clear your throat as he walks closer. “Uncle-”

He walks through you. Right through you. Your words die in your throat and you shiver to your core. It’s like a doctor checking your throat by poking it with a wooden stick, except it’s not just in your throat- it’s all over your body. Every muscle feels invaded, violated- you feel disgusting. You want to throw up. Out of everything you’ve ever experienced, that has got to be the worst thing.

You stumble away from him. It takes you a few moments to recover. Your uncle turns around, and as he closes the back door, you hear him mutter to himself. “I don't think I left the door open.”

You don’t think you survived that fall.

…

Being dead is…an experience, you could say. It’s a feeling of stillness in a constantly moving environment. It’s like being at the train station in the dead of the night, when no trains are running and everybody is at home, asleep. Silence and void in a place that’s normally buzzing with life. Except it’s not everything else that has gone quiet. It’s you.

It’s the feeling of looking out the window and seeing nothing change in the forest. Even the trees sway in the wind slower than you remember. Maybe you’re just being sentimental, though.

You don’t feel a lot. You feel empty. You think you should know what feeling empty is like, you’ve felt empty your whole life- empty of love and fulfillment and promises to count on. But this emptiness is nothing like what you felt before. This is an all-consuming emptiness. It’s like your very self has been erased away and you’re just the husk that remains.

One thing you do feel is anger. Absolute hatred and fury more than ever before, and you know exactly who it’s directed towards. You watch him now, sitting in his recliner, watching football on TV and shoveling KFC into his ugly, gross face. He’s been drinking his issues away. He can be your guest for all you care. You’d love to see him destroy his own liver. He deserves it. Motherfucker doesn’t seem to even care what he did to you. He doesn’t give a shit what he took from you.

You’re beginning to realize just how much you’ve missed out on. It’s funny, you think, in some despicable, self-deprecating way, how willingly you subjected yourself to your uncle’s dickheadery. Now that you’re stuck here, sitting on the couch and staring at his greasy fingers, it feels safe. Vindicating, even. Thinking of the distant world where you could make him understand how you feel. If you were alive now, if you could touch him, you would fight back. You’d make him pay for the shit he put you through.

But that’s just empty talk. You couldn’t fight back when you were actually alive. You probably couldn’t fight back now, even if you were able to. Nothing’s changed. He never really saw you anyway.

He burps.

“Fuck you,” you say. It feels good to say it out loud.

…

It hurts. It really hurts. It’s 4 AM and you’re in your old bed in the attic, twisting and turning. Your neck aches and your back even more so. The pain has been non-stop, always there, constant, ever since that day. You can’t sleep, physically, you don’t think. You’ve always been something of an insomniac, but at least you used to be able to steal sleep meds from the bathroom.

You writhe and sob. The pain is almost too much to bear. You wish you could die again to make it go away. Turns out the ‘sweet release of death’ is a total fucking myth. You breathe deeply into your pillow and try to get comfortable. For about ten seconds, you stay still. Nothing. You get up and curse loudly, tossing the pillow across the room. It hits the wall with a thud and drops to the ground. You sob and curl up around yourself. Some part of you is surprised that you can still cry. It brings you some relief, and you chase that distant feeling like a dream.

There are no tear stains on the covers.

…

Your uncle does not hang around.

It’s been a bit under a week now since you died, you think. You’ve been trying to keep track of the days, but you haven’t been getting hungry or tired at all, so your only indication of time passing is your uncle’s comings and goings. He’s been making rapid moving preparations ever since you died. Phone calls. Today is the day, it seems. From your understanding, he’s going to move to your grandma’s old summer home up north, by the shore of Lake Erie. Good riddance.

The cabinets have been emptied of food. The furniture has been covered with sheets. With two suitcases and a backpack, your uncle walks out the door. No goodbyes. No jubilation. You always thought the day you finally got separated from him would be one of action and excitement, but… it’s just silent. The cuckoo clock ticks quietly. You drift across the wooden floors and up the attic stairs. You drift to the roof to watch his car disappear out of the town. You drift back down after he’s gone. You guess you’re stuck in this sweater and these sweatpants and these woolen socks for eternity. You don’t know how long you’re going to be trapped here. There’s not exactly a guidebook for death.

In this gray emptiness you’ve found yourself in, you have to cling on to any emotions you have left. With your conduit for anger gone, you have nothing to cuss out. You wonder if there’s any point haunting an empty house. You don’t really have a choice, though. As the day passes and the night passes and then the sun begins to rise again, you reach for that anger and you take it out on the house. You throw a pot against the wall and the loud clunk echoes through the hallway. Why does it feel so good to throw things?

After twenty minutes, you’ve wrecked the kitchen. The pots and pans your uncle left behind are strewn on the floor. The table has been thoroughly flipped, and the vase which used to stand on it is in pieces on the ground. The sounds of the havoc you wreaked on the room still vibrate in your ears. Sobs wrack your body. You’re alone now. Nobody is here to punish you. Nobody will ever be here again.

…

You don’t know how long it’s been since your uncle left. Days, at least. Maybe weeks, maybe months. Who the hell knows anymore. Recently, you’ve been filled with this desperation to get out. You thought you’d accepted that this was your lot in afterlife, to be stuck in your home for eternity. But you know the scientific method. There has to be a way out of this hellhole. There has to be.

You try the window in the living room. You push, you shove, you try going in ass-first. You can’t even stick a hand through.

You go up the stairs to the window of your room, the same one you fell through. You try to go through, but the wall is still there. You even try to balance yourself with your back twisted and your neck in an uncomfortable and hard to maintain position so that you could back out the same way you fell. None of it works. Nothing helps. You go down the stairs to the back door again and try to run through.

You just end up hurting your fucking nose again.

You yell in frustration and punch the empty air. Then you yell again, this time in pain. 

Under your yell, you hear it. Empty, blank laughter, cut across by weak coughs. Small and soft, but distinctly _there_. The sound echoes in your head just a little bit, like a word spoken in a concert hall. You stop in your tracks and press your nose to the invisible wall. Sure enough, on the grass before the porch is a little girl. You jump in surprise and then press your face to the barrier to get a closer look. She’s young- can’t be older than a first or second grader. Her hair is messy and full of dead leaves and twigs. Even with all of that, the most striking thing about her is her clothes. They’re brown and frilly and old as fuck by the looks of them. All worn edges and sticks stuck in the lace. She looks like she crawled out of the grave.

“Hello?” you ask instantly. “Who the fuck are you?”

“I’m Aradia,” she says with a quiet, powerful voice. Your eyebrows furrow. She looks so small and insignificant on the dying grass, like a sparrow that fell from the nest. There’s a blank and unreadable look in her wide, dark eyes. She almost looks… surprised, if it was possible to be surprised without being surprised. Her dark skin is sickly and desaturated and her cheeks are hollow. She looks like she could use a meal or twelve in her. She breaks down into a fit of gross, mucusy coughing for a few moments before looking up at you again. “Aradia Megido.”

“Uh… I’m assuming you can see me.” Aradia nods. You sigh. “No offense, but are you a ghost?”

“I am, yes,” Aradia says. “I’m also the person that laughed at you just now because you hurt your hand.”

“Oh, awesome. So I _am_ dead,” you grumble and let your legs give out beneath you, dropping you onto your knees. Aradia stares at you blankly the whole time. “Why can’t I get out? What the fuck is this invisible wall here for?”

“Well, it’s your haunt, of course.” Aradia’s voice is infuriatingly monotone. “And you can’t leave your haunt.”

“My haunt? What the fuck does that mean?” you snarl.

“You’re haunting the house. It is your haunt,” she says without looking away from you for a moment. The noise that bubbles up from your throat can only be described as a feral sort of frustrated growl.

“Would you stop staring at me like that?” you snap. She blinks, slow and bug-eyed. You roll your eyes and shoulders, too. The ache in them recedes for just a moment before it rushes back in. You wince. “Ah, what the fuck ever. Great. This is just incredible! I’m a ghost stuck in my house with a small child, probably one with sadistic tendencies, staring at me. This is just perfect. There’s nothing I would rather be doing!”

“Death is like that, you know. Unwanted and forceful. For some people, anyway,” Aradia says. Her voice sounds like a psychic from a country fair. Calm and distant- mysterious. You ignore her actual words.

“How old are you?” you ask instead.

“Six,” she responds without missing a beat.

“Goddamn,” you curse under your breath.

“Well, technically, I’m much older than that,” she then says. “But I haven’t really aged since I died.”

You begin to recall that when you were younger, when you listened to your classmates, there were rumors. Stories of a ghost haunting the woods. You never thought much of it. You took them as urban legends. Fairytales you kids told yourselves to make life seem more exciting. You honestly can’t believe that all this time, they were true. “When’d you die?”

“I don’t know,” Aradia says coolly, and sneezes like a toddler into the crook of her elbow.

“Wow, awesome! My guide to the spirit world is a playground kid from the fucking medieval times! This fucking purgatory is literally hell on earth. Is this my uncle’s revenge for not being a real Christian who believes in God? I thought at least I’d get to enter the blissful haven of having a demon beat me with a whip for eternity or something if he did end up being right, but at least then I would get to watch the same thing happen to him! Now I’m just here, and this is somehow worse than being tortured for-fucking-ever!” you yell to Aradia. She doesn’t even flinch. It seems emotions are almost completely beyond her. You let out a loud yell, stand up and start pacing around. Every muscle in your body feels taut. Aradia keeps staring, which makes you even angrier. "Don't you get it? I have to be in this godforsaken fucking house for eternity!"

"That's not true," Aradia says quietly. At that, you quit pacing and rush to press yourself flat against the invisible wall. She says nothing. You make an angry noise.

"You're just going to leave it there? 'That's not true,' Jesus, get my hopes up and break them down again? Come the fuck on," you practically snarl at her. You leer around the empty lawn around her. "Where are all the other dead people? You and I are ghosts, reasonably we shouldn't be the only ones around. Shouldn't there be a bunch more dead people? Where have they gone and how do I join them, pray fucking tell?"

"Calm down," Aradia says. You shriek in frustration and kick the barrier. The impact travels from your foot and up your spine. The pain in your neck spikes sharply. You make an embarrassingly high-pitched noise and break out into a cough. A painful, dry cough, which chokes you. It's not the first time this has happened since you died. The scratchy feeling in your throat and the ache in your head have been there the whole time. They're a stark difference from Aradia's sick, phlegmy sounds. Aradia shakes her head ever so slightly. “You’re only hurting yourself.”

“Stop being so fucking cryptic, you shithead six-year-old! Just tell me how I stop being a ghost!” you shout.

“Oh, you can’t stop being a ghost. You just have to wait it out.” At that, losing your nerves, you yell once more, slam the door closed, and walk away.

…

You can’t stay away for very long, comparatively speaking. Existence as a ghost is boring and timeless. Aradia is there all the time. You see her sitting in the grass outside through the windows. She doesn’t seem to want to leave you the fuck alone. Doesn’t she have anything better to do?

It’s been maybe a few weeks since your first conversation. The first snow has fallen now, and the grass and leaves have been hidden beneath a thick layer of white. You’ve finally grown tired of doing nothing but floating around emptily, rearranging the fridge magnets into curse words and tearing up toilet paper rolls.

Defeated, you open the back door. Cold air rushes into the previously warm house, chilling you under your sweater. Aradia is sitting in the snow without a care, building a tiny snowman absentmindedly. She looks up at you like she isn’t even surprised. Snot runs down from her nose to her lip, and she seems too apathetic to wipe it off. Her voice is as passive as you remember. “It took you long enough. You know, in my time it was considered rude to yell at a stranger without even telling her your name.”

“Oh, shut up,” you growl, leaning against the doorframe. “My name’s Karkat. Karkat Vantas.”

“Nice to meet you,” Aradia says and turns her attention back to the tiny snowman. Still, she continues speaking, as though addressing the little mound on the ground. “I know this is probably very strange for you. It was very strange for me when I died.”

“‘Strange’ is a bit of an understatement,” you say. “Why am I still here? Shouldn’t I be in, like, heaven, or have been reincarnated into the happy life of an old lady’s Yorkshire Terrier or something?”

“I’m not an expert on the cycle of life and death, Karkat Vantas,” Aradia says. “But I have some theories. I think ghosts are created when souls don’t have anywhere to go.”

“You mean like, atheists?” you ask, raising an eyebrow.

“Not necessarily,” she continues. “A place to go can be heaven or hell, it can be reincarnation. But it can be somewhere else, too. It can be… ah… Home, I guess. The place where you most belong.”

“Am I not ‘home’ right now? In fact, I’m stuck at home,” you say. 

“Well, yes, you’re home, but are you Home?” she asks, emphasizing the last word, as though it’s special, as though it carries some meaning that cannot be expressed any other way. You frown. You suppose you never felt like you belonged in this house. You lived here out of obligation and fear, never because it felt like the place you were meant to be, as corny as that sounds. 

“I guess… I guess not,” you concede. Aradia hums passively and sticks twigs into the snowman’s sides to act as arms. You watch, processing all of this. “So what’s this theory based on? Your personal experience?”

“I’ve met other ghosts,” Aradia says. “These woods are large. Sometimes I meet wandering spirits. Then they go away.”

“Where?” you ask, mildly concerned.

“That, I don’t know. But I’ve seen them fade away. I think… after a long enough time, if one has no place to go, eventually… one begins to disappear. Becomes forgotten. Decomposed. A relic of the past. Then, when there is no place for one in this world anymore, one fades away.” Aradia examines one of her hands. It looks paler than her face until you realize why. The tips of her fingers become transparent at the ends, fading into the slightly more visible palm of her hand, like she’s not flesh and blood anymore. The snowy ground behind colors her hand white. Your mouth opens on its own.

“I’m really sorry,” you say, softer than normal. Aradia looks up at you, and for the first time, you see an emotion of some sort in her eyes. It’s melancholy, resigned. It’s sadness. Sympathy and sorrow begin to fill you up, and you realize that Aradia, just like you, is a person. She’s only a kid, much younger than you, and she’s stuck here like this. God, you’re such a fucking asshole all the time, aren’t you, Vantas? Fucking everything up. “I’m sorry I yelled at you. If I’d have known that you… Ugh.”

“I understand,” Aradia says, standing up, slowly. The hem of her brown dress is covered in the white dust of snow. “You were afraid. I am very afraid, too.”

She wades through the snow, ragged dress dragging through it and becoming wet and dirty. She places her hand in the air at the foot of the porch, leans her forehead against nothing, and it hits you. She can’t come up to you. She really is just as stuck as you are. Five feet of worn off-white planks and impenetrable nothingness separate you and this small child, who must have been so much more scared and confused than you ever were.

You lean forward as she did, resting one hand and your forehead against the barrier that keeps you apart. You wish you could hug her. You wish you could tell her she’s going to be okay. But you don’t know for sure yourself, anymore.


	3. Bend Once, Take a Year

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i really wanted to post this on the 14th and now it's technically the 14th where i live and man now i've prepared this chapter for posting and shit but ao3 won't let me post it with the date as the 14th what are you DOING ao3

Time passes. You watch the seasons change from the roof of the house. The snow has melted long ago and the leaves are green. It’s the first summer since you died. The breeze plays with your hair. Aradia sits on the ground by your house. This is almost the closest the two of you can get to each other, her leaning against the wall and you against the invisible force keeping you within the boundaries of the roof tiles. You sit in silence just listening to the birds for a long time before she speaks. “What can you see out there?”

You look upon Prospit. The town is still about as dead as you are. Occasionally, cars will drive past or you’ll see a teen or two walking home. “I think there’s a construction site across town. They might be building a mall.”

“A mall?” Aradia asks. She doesn’t know a lot about modern inventions. As the two of you have gotten to know each other and she’s told you more about her life, you’ve managed to pinpoint her time of death to the mid-1800s. She was amazed by something as simple as a flashlight. When you managed to move the TV onto the porch so she could watch Raiders of the Lost Ark, she was so excited that she actually burst into a smile, a real, genuine smile. Coming from her, that’s not a common reaction. She told you she hadn’t felt so happy since she was alive.

“A mall is like… a big building with a lot of stores in it. It’s like an indoor marketplace,” you explain. Below you, Aradia hums, and silence settles again. Soon, you break it. “We never had a mall or anything like that when I was alive. I wish I could go out there and see what’s happening in the world.”

“Me too,” Aradia sighs. “There are so many amazing things that have come to be since I died. But… at least I’m here to see them from a distance, even if I can’t see them up close.” 

You nod. There’s an unspoken thought in the air, both of you wondering the same, eternal questions: what happens when you double die? Where is Home, and how does a wandering spirit get there?

Aradia’s fingers are still translucent. It hasn’t become much more noticeable, but now that you know that it’s there, you can’t help but make note of it every time she presses the palm of her hand to the window glass to let you know she’s bored. You’ve become something of a big brother to her. You’ve taught her to play Blackjack and Monopoly. Neither of you can eat or sleep, and you have a lot of time on your hands.

“I think… It might be my birthday today,” you admit, looking down at Aradia. She looks up in turn. “Or at least we’re around that time. June 12th.”

“Happy birthday, Karkat.”

“You know, when I was alive, we had a tradition where on someone’s birthday, we would sing a song to them,” you say.

“How did it go?” she asks. You sigh. You’re not much of a singer. Your voice is much too croaky and throaty for it, but you try anyway, singing Happy Birthday to yourself. You did that for many years when you were alive. With a birthday cake flavored dollar store cupcake and a single candle stuffed in it, you would hunch at your desk and hum to yourself quietly, when you thought your uncle couldn’t hear you. Now, your voice is weak and wheezy. Your throat isn’t exactly in the best condition.

“If it was your birthday, I would sing ‘dear Aradia’ instead,” you explain to her. She smiles.

“Well, I technically have lots of birthdays to make up for, so you should get to singing,” she says. You laugh loudly.

“Okay, here goes.”

You sing to her once. Although her face is blank, you can see joy in her eyes when she looks up at you. You’ve never gotten any birthday gifts for as long as you’ve been alive, but knowing that you’ve made her afterlife that little bit better is a gift enough for you. Even if this is the only mark you leave on the world, it’s good enough.

…

It’s July or August now, you think. Late summer. You’re getting around to adding the mall construction ground to tiny Prospit. You can’t go there in person of course, so it’s mostly just the tower crane and a foundation. You’re running out of trash to adapt into buildings. The tower crane is constructed from the last yellow laundry detergent bottle you had in the house.

A voice calls from the open window. “Karkat! Come downstairs! I have to show you something!”

You set down the spokes you were crafting for the foundation and go down the stairs two steps at a time. The house is still kind of a mess- you haven’t cleaned it properly since you wrecked it last fall. You hop over the shards of shattered plates on the ground to the back door. Aradia can’t come to the front door of the house, since that technically doesn’t qualify as the forest anymore, and she can’t leave the woods.

You open the door and sure enough, she’s standing at the foot of the stairs with something in her hands. You lean against the doorframe. “Well? What’d I run down here for, huh?”

Aradia tosses something to your feet. The two of you may not be able to touch each other, but you can still transfer objects between each other’s worlds. You lean down and pick up the trinket from the ground. It’s a crystalline stone, just small enough to fit in Aradia’s palm. Despite its translucency, the way that the sunlight passes through and casts a sharp contrast of shadow and color on your hand makes it feel more real than you are. It doesn’t have the imperfections of quartz in it. You look up at Aradia. “Is this…?”

“A diamond,” Aradia says, the shadow of a smile on her face. “I found it in the woods. I think that when the mine was still active, they sometimes accidentally dropped diamonds in the forest when they took them to the other side. That one was all muddy and dirty when I found it, so I cleaned it off. I thought I’d bring it to you. I have one of my own, too, so now we both have one.”

“Thank you,” you say, laughter in your voice. This thing would be worth more than the sum of everything you’ve ever owned if you were still alive. Now its monetary worth is completely irrelevant to you. Funny how something so important to you then can matter so little now. “I’ll put it in my room next to tiny Prospit. That way I’ll remember you forever.”

Aradia looks a little bit taken aback, and then she smiles. “Thank you, Karkat.”

…

“I swear I left them in here,” you murmur. You wade and shuffle through old lawn decorations and cardboard boxes, trying to keep dust out of your nose. Then you find the little rectangular box. It’s just barely out of your reach. You stand on your tippy-toes and grab the disposable gloves from the top shelf. They’re still the perfect size for your tiny baby hands. You put a pair on.

It’s cleaning day.

You’ve been here for about a year now. The leaves have turned gold and brown outside. Aradia crafts them into garlands. Most people do spring cleaning. In the afterlife, you do fall cleaning. You’re starting to get sick and tired of living in the mess your little meltdown made after your uncle left. You start by gathering cleaning equipment in the living room. You bring in trash bags, the vacuum cleaner, a mop, a bucket, all sorts of stuff useful for cleaning and nothing else.

You sweep up the plates and vases you threw at the wall, rearrange the pots and pans, wipe off the kitchen surfaces, turn the tables back upright. In short, you make sure the house is arranged perfectly. It gets your mind off… well, everything. Your impending demise looming on the horizon, the crushing loneliness of having no human contact besides Aradia, the void in your soul left by death. For a few days, it’s just you, your cleaning tools and a house left in disgusting condition.

…

There’s a knock at the kitchen window while you’re scrubbing down the sink. You’ve been cleaning for a full day and night now, so you aren’t surprised to see Aradia’s wide eyes behind the glass. You roll your shoulders and neck. Your head has been uncomfortably loose ever since your death. Huffing a weak cough into your elbow crease, you walk over and open the window. Aradia moves her hands off the glass for a moment and then, when the glass is gone, places them back on the barrier, as though you didn’t just open the window. “I like your hairband.”

“Thanks,” you say. Your hair is kind of messy and tends to get in your face, so you pushed it back with a headband while you were cleaning. “Do you also like what I’ve done with the place?”

Aradia strains her neck to peek into the kitchen. The table, with a fresh tablecloth on it, sits upright in the corner with three chairs neatly tucked beneath it. Pots, pans, cutting knives- everything arranged neatly. Countertops wiped clean. Her eyes go wide. “You have been working hard.”

“I’ve done housework since I was your age, I damn well better be good at it by now,” you say.

Aradia chuckles very quietly and then sniffles, wiping her nose. “Since you were one hundred and an odd something?”

“Oh, shut up,” you snap with no real anger. Looking at Aradia, you notice she must have been trekking around the woods the whole time. The thick mess of her hair is even untidier than you remember it being. “Hold on for a bit.”

You turn and rush to the bathroom. Sure enough, the cabinet has a collection of hairbrushes, some unused. You should really start to brush your hair, too. Personal hygiene tends to kind of start to not matter when you die. You grab a brush- a black one with a long handle and a football team’s logo on the back- and return to the kitchen.

“Here,” you say to Aradia, sticking the handle end of the brush out of the window. “Brush your hair.”

Aradia stares at the brush for a moment and then moves away from the window. She sits down in the grass and starts to painstakingly comb through the fluffy chaos on her head. She pulls out twigs and runs through the near-matted, tangled mess many times. The expression on her face is uncomfortable, which makes sense, but at least she doesn’t seem to be in total agony. While she busies herself with the brush, you take the liberty to wring out the cloth you wiped the tables with. You hang it to dry above the sink.

“Thanks,” Aradia says eventually, sticking the brush back through the window. Her hair is definitely still messier than you’d like, but at least it doesn’t look like the nest of a very large family of birds. You take the brush and set it on the table. Aradia begins to back away. “I guess I’ll go now.”

“Wait, Aradia,” you say. She looks at you, questioning. You place your hand against the barrier that separates you from the outside world. For a moment, Aradia stands there, but then she hurries back to the window and presses her palm against yours. Like a sheet of glass, the tiniest sliver of air separates your hands from each other. Still, you think you can feel the ghost of her, as if a gentle imprint is being pressed against the force that keeps you from her. It reminds you on a deep level that there’s a person there. There’s still something profoundly real and human in you and Aradia, despite all you’ve been through. You’re still you. You’re still alive, in the only meaning of the word that really matters. 

Then she steps away, waves, and runs back to the woods. You watch her go until she vanishes from sight.

…

The years pass faster and faster. Aradia grows sadder, more distant, like she was when you first met her. Sicker. Then she becomes happier again for a little while, smiling openly and coughing less, and on and on in a constant cycle. The mall gets completed.

One night in early spring, some years after your death, you sit on the roof watching the woods. Your neck aches from keeping your head in its place while it leans back. On nights like these, Aradia usually shows up to watch the stars. Tonight, no such luck, it seems. You’re about to get up and go back inside when you see the flicker of her in the woods. You squint, and there it is again. Behind the treeline, a flash of snow-coated hair there, a face peeking from behind a tree here. It does look, well, haunting. Is this what the living feel like when they see one of your kind?

Aradia emerges from the woods, slowly, feet dragging. She looks tired and weak. She comes down to the slope your house is on and sits down in the snow, slumping like the last of her strength had been sapped away. You lean as far as you can to see her below. “Hey, Aradia.”

“Hello, Karkat,” Aradia says, leaning her head against the wall. She sniffles and coughs weakly.

“Are you okay?” you ask. Aradia gives no response. If there is one, it’s a weak hum carried away by the wind. After some moments, you break the silence. “You look tired.”

“There was a family of ducks stuck under the riverbed,” Aradia says, and then she pauses when a huge wave of coughing overtakes her. It sounds disgusting and painful. “There was a log blocking the entrance to their nest. I had to move it. They would have starved otherwise. The river was freezing. Ah... It hurts so much.”

“You shouldn’t over-exert yourself like that,” you say calmly. Aradia’s shoulders spasm with wheezy coughing. Her body is only six, and beyond that, she’s been left sickly and frail by her death. Unlike you, she died ill, starving and paper-thin. Even though she’s one of the wisest people you’ve ever known, she’s not very strong. You don’t think her soul fading away can do any good for her physical prowess, either. “How’d you move the log?”

“Telekinesis,” Aradia gets out.

“Telekinesis?” you ask.

“Mm-hmm,” Aradia muses. “Ghosts have telekinesis, didn’t you know?”

“...What? How would I have known that?” you yell, snappy and quick. When you go to stand up, your foot hits a slippery part of the roof. The shingles break off alongside a healthy lump of snow and fall to the ground, leaving behind a gaping hole of supporting paneling and insulation. The thump of the tiling hitting the ground startles Aradia, who looks up at you. You immediately regret that outburst. You just can’t stop fucking up, can you, Vantas? “Can telekinesis fix that?”

“You can only move things that are in the place you’re haunting,” Aradia says. “I can’t move things in your house just as I can’t go inside. You can’t move things outside the house.”

“Ugh, of fucking course there’s some stupid goddamn limitations on this shit, too,” you complain. “Who the hell came up with these rules? I can’t fix the roof without tiles!” 

Aradia just shakes her head. “I don’t think that’s a job you’re supposed to do.”

…

Life as a ghost becomes more frustrating as it goes on. You thought it was frustrating in the beginning, but now the house is starting to fall apart beneath you and you’re powerless to fix it. Also, it turns out you supposedly have a bunch of ghost superpowers Aradia never told you about and that have never manifested before, so now you have to figure those out. Goddammit, why does everything have to be such a federal fucking issue?

You stare intensely at the lamp. 

Focus. 

Concentrate. 

Lamp - move! 

The lamp remains completely still on the desk. 

You close your eyes, sigh, look up and try again. You try to envision in your head the lamp floating above the desk, how the cable that connects it to the wall would look hanging down from a floating desk lamp. Focus. Concentrate. Envision. Yell at a lamp. “Lamp. Move. Now!”

Nothing fucking happens.

You groan with exasperation and drop down into the blankets. You’ve been doing this for weeks now, months, probably. Even the years have started to pass like a blur. Why is it so hard to make things move around with nothing but your willpower? Aradia seems to know how to do it, and she does have a hundred years of ghost experience on you, but she’s a fucking six-year-old. You couldn’t even tie your shoelaces at age six. Granted, you knew how to make a damn good spaghetti and pay your uncle’s taxes, but that wasn’t- that was- 

...Okay, bad example.

Maybe you’re just a broken ghost with no superpowers. Leaning your head against the wall of the attic, you close your eyes. You know you can’t sleep anymore, but sometimes you try anyway. You chase the elusive bliss of unconsciousness like an ex that left you on the side of the road, to no avail. Instead, you hear a faint scratching sound inside the wall where your ear is pressed against it. That doesn’t sound good.

You hop down the stairs two steps at a time and enter the laundry room. Pressing your ear against the wall again, you can definitely hear some sort of rattling, scuttling noise inside. What’s in there? A really loud cockroach? A broken air conditioner? In the corner of your eye, you see the laundry chute shift ever so slightly. You turn to look and find a few dashes of brown fur rushing out. Rats!

“Hey! Hey, hey, hey, fuckers, no! Get out of my house!” you yell - to deaf ears, obviously - chasing the rats down the hall. They rush into the kitchen and climb up on the table. Fucking rats! In your house! Goddammit! Just because they don’t see you doesn’t mean they get to strut around like they own the place. You need something to shoo them out with- a broom!

You turn around and run to the back door. If you remember correctly, there should be a broom on the po- Ow, fuck!

“God! Fucking! Dammit!” you yell, rubbing your forehead. A sharp pain runs from your head down your spine and activates all those little nerve endings that are still working despite your fucked up bones. You forgot that you can’t go out on the porch. Frustratingly, you can see the broom, right there, just out of reach. If you could just reach your arm out through the door, you’d be able to grab it. Aradia looks up from where she’s sitting in the grass making a flower crown. Who the hell are all those flower crowns even _for?_

“What’s going on?” she asks.

“Rats! Literally rats in my house!” you yell. She doesn’t seem to understand why this is a big deal, as her expression doesn’t shift at all before she looks back down at the flowers. You run back inside and down the stairs in the laundry room into the basement where you got the latex gloves. Shuffling through everything, you find a crowbar and rush back up, not stopping for a second. 

Leaning your whole weight against the invisible barrier, you desperately flail the crowbar at the broom on the porch. It just about reaches enough to knock the broom over. It makes a loud noise as it falls to the ground. The very tip of the wooden stick, thank god, is inside the house. You grab it and pull it in, holding it like a shotgun ready to fire. The rats finally look at you, startled by the noise of wood hitting wood. They look understandably terrified by what, to them, appears like a large wooden stick floating in midair. You lift it above your head and proceed to chase the rats around the house whilst screaming wildly. “Get the fuck out of my house, you pestilent rodents!”

…

It’s no use. Not even a floating broom can get these motherfuckers out. You sit at the kitchen table sweaty, out of breath and completely defeated. A rat sits on the table in front of you eating a sugar cube. It looks up at you. You glare murderously at it. “The fuck you looking at? Shithead.”

…

Your house is quite popular among teenagers. This is not a good thing.

It’s an experience to remember, having to sit up awake while fifteen-year-olds go at it wildly on the sofa of your living room. It’s not a pleasant experience, but by god will you remember it forever. Those sounds are going to be seared into your eardrums for eternity.

They graffiti the outer walls. The worst part of that particular tendency is that you can’t even fucking see what they’re writing, because you can’t so much as stick your head through the window! You would ask Aradia to read them out for you, but you’ve tried that already, and as it turns out, she can’t read. So that’s something to work on, you guess.

…

Okay, so things aren’t really going to plan. The roof tiling has a few holes in it. There’re rats everywhere. You’ve had to fend off so many drunk teenagers that they’ve stopped coming because of how notoriously haunted your house is. The floor tiles are going to rot around you and you will have no escape. You’ve been stuck in this building for god knows how many years and you will be for many, many more. You might be having something of an extreme mental breakdown.

But, on the bright side, you’re finally getting the hang of these ghost powers. To some extent. 

You can’t do telekinesis like Aradia can. In fact, you can’t do… most things. But you’re starting to figure out how to do some really basic ghost stuff, like pass through walls, and you’re learning to control how to get objects to pass through you, too. Maybe that’s just a sign of you becoming less corporeal. Maybe that’s an anxiety for another day.

Tiny Prospit hasn’t evolved much since the mall was built. It’s almost sad how little things have changed in… well, however many years you’ve been haunting this place. Some of the houses have changed a bit. Families have moved away, a few have moved in for some stupid reason. Prospit, OH, is a dying town. No question about it. What a perfect place to spend your afterlife.

The house is definitely falling into disarray despite your attempts to fix it. The floorboards in the basement are rotting. The carpet in the living room has been chewed through by your furry little roommates. You’ve placed a bucket in the attic to keep rainwater from coming in, which is something you never thought you would have to do in this lifetime. Deathtime.

God, this is hell. You’re in hell.

Aradia tries to help. She does. You appreciate it. She sits with you late at night and talks about your lives. You tell her about your uncle and she tells you about her mother, who left her and her brother when she was too young to take care of either of them. You tell her of the classmates that broke your cassettes and shoved your face into the wall and called you gay, and she tells you about a creepy girl who lived on the street whose finger she almost bit off in self-defense. 

She tells you about her death. Things you know she’s never told anybody. The things she’s been through feel surreal. It’s like you’re from different worlds. Still, you find comfort in this. Two outcasts waiting for Double Death to collect your pitiful little souls. You’re both broken, but at least you’re not alone. Not fully.

…

It’s a cold autumn day. You’re sitting in the living room, on the dusty old recliner still covered in a white sheet. You remember the pale chartreuse beneath it like it was yesterday even though you haven’t seen it in many, many years. The floorboards creak ever so slightly with the rats running around, leaving pawprints everywhere. Your woolen socks don’t seem to make any marks in the dust that covers the ground as a thin layer.

Beyond that, the house is in complete silence, as it often is. You wish you had a music player or something. A Walkman, maybe. You and your uncle weren’t too poor, but you never had enough to spare for you to be able to buy anything fancy for yourself. Miniature fake grass isn’t that expensive. You reread the same paragraph of the book you’re reading. Ooh, damn, Taswat and Emthys are in deep shit now.

There’s a creak- louder than what the rats would cause. Immediately, some deep-seated part of your brain screams at you to run upstairs and hide. You let the book fall through your thighs (shuddering with discomfort in the process) and get up. You hear voices.

“You’re being a wuss, John. Why would we not want to see a ghost?” says one voice, cheery and bright.

“I am not being a wuss! I’m just saying that this is probably just a story, and even if it was true, we probably shouldn’t be seeking it out- hey, wait for me!” another one, with a goofy sound, responds. The floor creaks loudly under the weight of whoever is speaking. “Rose agrees with me, right?”

“John, I could not agree with you less,” a third, calmer voice says. Three children pass the door of the living room. The one speaking gives a cursory glance in your direction, furrows her brows ever so slightly. She’s holding an expensive-looking camera. “I think this is a potentially extremely valuable scientific expedition. Do you notice how everything seems to be very… orderly in here?”

“Orderly? Did you see the front of the house? The place is falling apart,” the only boy in the group says. He’s wearing rectangular glasses and looks quite scrawny. His messy black hair looks oily even from where you’re standing. Jeez, take a shower, kid. The girl with the camera is pale and blonde. She’s wearing eyeliner, black lipstick and a headband decorated with lace. The other girl’s face is practically all hidden behind a mess of black hair and a pair of huge round glasses. These kids are young, maybe a little older than Aradia. 

“Yes, of course it is. Nobody’s been in here for decades,” the girl with the camera, Rose, says, snapping a picture of a painting on the wall. “Naturally it’s not in the best condition, but wouldn’t you think things should be a little messier?”

“Maybe we should fix that,” the girl with the round glasses says, holding her hand up in a fist. She casually knocks the key bowl off a table. It crashes to the ground and shatters. By now, you’ve decided that the only thing worse than teenagers is children. The three of them set for the kitchen. You just rearranged the cabinets, if those kids mess them up, you swear to god- “Look! Friends!”

You hear John’s voice. “Eww, are those rats?”

You have to get these bastards out of here before they totally mess the whole place up. Following carefully, you peek your head through the kitchen door. Rose is taking photos of the table, while the girl with the messy hair is trying to feed the rats a piece of jerky.

“See what I mean about everything being too clean?” Rose asks, gesturing at the table. “This is highly unusual.”

“No, it’s not. Ghosts aren’t real, Rose,” John says, but it’s not clear if he’s trying to convince her or himself. He’s standing with his arms crossed, his back to the kitchen door. Poor kid looks like he’s about to piss himself. Maybe you could help with that. “I honestly think this whole trip was a stupid idea. Maybe we should- EEH!”

“John? You okay?” the girl in the glasses asks. John is presently busy trying to swat your ghost hand away from being inside his head. Being able to pass through objects… it’s not pleasant, but it’s an easy way to haunt living folks, at least. It’s the simple things that make haunting fun, you suppose.

“There’s something in my head!” John says. “Like- eugh- cold and gross! Get it out, get it out!”

Rose gasps loudly and directs her camera at you. “It’s the ghost!”

Shit. You don’t know if cameras can capture you, and you’d rather not find out. You let yourself sink into the floorboards before the camera snaps. For once, you actually can get swallowed by the earth to escape an awkward situation. You drift your way into the basement and climb up the staircase. The kids are still in the kitchen. You can hear them. “Are you alright, John?”

“I’m fine now. Rose, did you get a picture of it?” you hear John say. “There’s nothing there.”

“Yeah, I can see that. It must have disappeared. Now we know it’s here, though, which means we can find it!” Rose says, followed by thumping and creaking of three children walking around a very old house. “Come on, guys. Ghosts like to hide in attics, let’s check there.”

“I think it was probably just the wind. There’s nothing here, we should just go home-” John says, but the messy-haired girl interrupts him.

“Oh, can it, John. Finally, some excitement!”

“Speak for yourself! My brain almost got frozen by Rose’s imaginary ghost!”

Rose’s complaints get drowned out by your thoughts rushing in. You can’t let them go to the attic. That’s your haven. Your sanctuary. You’re not about to let some greasy-fingered nine-year-olds fuck up tiny Prospit. Rushing up the stairs, you pass through the children and the door. You press your whole weight to it from the inside and as you do, you hear the kids’ reaction to having a ghost pass through them on the other side of it. John shrieks again. “There it was again! Did you guys feel it?”

“Fascinating, very fascinating,” Rose says. You heard the last girl scoff.

“Yeah, no, you were right, John, that was just the wind. Come on!” You hear loud footsteps ascend the staircase and then a rattle and a shake of the door. Pause. And then someone pushes the door again, shoving. You push against it as hard as you can. “Ugh, the door is stuck!”

“Maybe it’s locked?” Rose asks.

“No, it’s not!” the girl with the glasses says. “No way! Just come help me with this, okay? You too, John!”

Silence for a moment. Then, a force on the door, triple what it was before. John’s voice carries through, wavering. “Okay, three, two, one, push!”

These are some strong-ass fourth graders. You suppose you are also wearing woolen socks, which doesn’t exactly increase your steadfastness on wooden floors. The door slides open despite your best attempts to push back. The trio of children flounders into the room, and the bespectacled girl laughs. “Wow, that worked?”

“Is that a model of the town?” John asks. “Holy shit, guys, look! That’s my house!”

The glasses girl rushes to his side. “Oh, that’s awesome! Look, there’s my house!”

“Jade. We live in the same house.”

“Yes, very cool,” Rose says derisively, looking around with her camera poised. “Don’t forget that we’re here to look for a ghost!”

You press yourself to the wall. You really don’t like that John and… what was it? Jade? Are messing around with tiny Prospit. You put your heart and soul into that thing, if they break it, so help you god. John groans. “Rose, there’s no ghost in here! It’s just a fairytale for babies!”

“Shut up! I know there’s a ghost here, I can feel it in my bones!” Rose says, leering at the room like a film noir detective. You know the living can’t see you, Aradia’s told you that much, but you still feel like you need to avoid her gaze. 

“Oops,” John says. There’s a crack. Oh, for fuck’s sake. Jade starts to complain, but John cuts her off. “It’s fine, it was just a power line! Nobody lives here anyway, nobody’ll miss it, it’s fine.”

You need to get these kids out of your house. Stat.

You sink through the floor of the room and into the hallway downstairs. In the kitchen, the magnets on the fridge door are in a mess. You arrange them quickly. You only have one T, so two Is will have to suffice in the second one’s place. You open the window. “Aradia!”

Within a few moments, she emerges from the woods and drifts down to the window. “Greetings, Karkat.”

You try to ignore how she still insists on saying ‘hello’ or ‘greetings’ every time you see her. “Hey! Uh, so I have something of a situation going on. You wouldn’t happen to have, like, a squirrel corpse or a dead bird or something on you?”

Aradia’s face lights up. “Oh, of course! Hold on for just a moment.”

She rushes into the woods and emerges a moment later with an armful of dead animals.

“We have a weasel, a few pigeons, a snake- some snake skins, too, and this is a gray squirrel,” she presents with pride, placing each one on the windowsill like a prize. Then she starts to pull out bones from… somewhere. “I also have a quail skull, a fox skull, a raccoon skull, this one I think is a femur but I’m not sure what animal it’s from. I think it might also be from a fox.”

“Okay, these are incredible,” you say. She smiles just a little. You think, if she’d had the chance, Aradia could have been an incredible biologist. She certainly doesn’t get squicked by gore or death. “Do you mind if I borrow them for a bit? I swear they won’t get damaged at all.”

“Go ahead,” Aradia says. You grab some of the corpses - eugh - and spread them around the kitchen. You’re going to have to clean this up later, but for now, you just need to get the kids out of your house. You hang a bird skull - quail, was it? - in the hallway, place a dead squirrel in the sink, a snakeskin on the table. There’s an open wound on one of the pigeons, so you take some of that blood and smear it across the island and the fridge door. Aradia watches intently. “What are you doing, exactly?”

“There’s some living kids in the house. I need to get them out,” you explain. She nods.

“I can make some corpses float outside your door if you want,” she suggests.

“Thank you, but I think this will be enough,” you say without missing a neat. You don’t want her to exert herself. Aradia goes to sit in the grass and watch the show go down. You pick up the crowbar you left in the living room and throw it against the floor. The crash, as you hoped, alerts the kids upstairs. You hide in the cellar staircase. In a moment, the attic floor creaks.

“Ugh, Rose, it was just the rats,” John whines. “There’s nothing here!”

Rose, completely ignoring him, rushes right past him into the kitchen. Then come the exclamations. “Holy crap!”

“Uh… was this like this when we left?” Jade asks uncertainly. Her confidence is gone.

“Look, the magnets on the fridge door say ‘get out,’” John says weakly. You can’t see the kids, but the silence tells you they’re looking at each other with terror right about now. 

“We should leave,” Jade says loudly.

“What? Now? We’ve just found proof that there’s something here!” Rose says.

“Ha ha ha ha ha! Funny prank, Rose! Very funny! Trying to trick us into thinking there’s a ghost here! No sirree! I’m the master of pranks, you hear? Nobody pranks John Egbert and gets away with it! We’re leaving before you pull your big finale on us, right, Jade?” John asks, and you can hear the creaking and his voice approaching the door.

“Uh-huh, uh-huh,” Jade says, following along eagerly. You open the door to the staircase just in time to see the two of them rush out.

“Guys, wait!” Rose says, running after them. As you step into the hallway, the door separating the stairs from the rest of the house creaks loudly. Rose stops in her tracks, turning around slowly. At that moment, time feels like it slows down. She stares you dead in the eye, face full of terror. You stare back. It’s almost like… she sees you.

“Boo,” you say.

She turns on her heels and runs out of the house.

…

You don't know if the little rascals told anybody what they'd seen. Knowing what kids their age are like, they almost certainly did. Thankfully, it seems nobody believed them. Their little misadventure probably turned into another piece of Prospit Elementary School's ever-expanding "this town is haunted" lore. Blissful calm and silence return to the house. After you clean up and return Aradia’s collection to her, it’s almost like nothing happened at all. The only identifying marks the kids left on your house are a key bowl you can’t seem to fix and a little bit of dried glue marking the point where one of tiny Prospit’s transmission towers broke. You often feel lonely here, but you’d rather be alone for another hundred years than have to tolerate the living messing up your house.

…

"Good evening, Karkat," Aradia says from behind the window. You turn the page and look over with a questioning look. She's leaning on the windowsill, relaxed. Some part of you wishes the two of you had known each other when you were alive. It might sound weird, but you kind of wish you could watch her grow up. Be a big brother to her. A real one. "Could you set up the TV so I can watch Raiders of the Lost Ark? I want to see the scene where the faces melt off again."

"Sometimes it strikes me how morbid you are," you say to her. Aradia breathes out forcefully- her version of a laugh. Even though she's happy now, it seems that things get harder for her during the winters. Especially just when the first snows are starting to fall. That's when she's the most absent. You put your book down and get up to set the TV up for her. "How many times have you seen that movie, anyhow?"

"Uh, probably about one hundred and seven. Oh, and Temple of Doom sixty more. Does that count?" Aradia asks. You wheeze a laugh, hauling the TV to the window.

"Broaden your horizons a bit," you advise her. "I could show you some films I've seen that I think you'd like, later. Ones with really gruesome violence and psychological horror."

You loudly stage whisper the last sentence. Aradia considers it. "Hm… Alright, but if there aren't at least two very bloody deaths, I’m not interested."

You snort and slide the VHS tape into the player. There's static and a god-awful 'whirr' for a minute or so before the film starts playing. There are a few awkward cuts and indiscernible lines of dialogue because of how old the tapes are getting, but Aradia doesn't seem to mind. You go back to reading your book while the sounds of the movie play in the background.

“Karkat,” Aradia says after a while. You look over. She’s still staring at the TV screen. Her expression communicates that she would probably be drifting off into sleep if she could. “Do you ever wonder what’s going on out there? In the rest of the world?”

“Oh, all the time,” you sigh. “I wonder about all the books and movies I’ll never get to read because I’m stuck in here. The romance of my life that I never got to have because my fuckin’ uncle murdered me. All the amazing things I want to show you, of course.”

Aradia smiles a bit, tired. “It’s just, there are so many things I’ve seen in this movie and in your house. They look so… strange. Like that thing. What is that? I’ve seen you use it- well, seen and heard. It seems terrifying.”

Aradia points past you at the vacuum cleaner resting against the wall on the other side of the living room. You scoff. “Oh, that’s just a vacuum. It cleans up dust and shit like that. Wow, vacuum cleaners are really that new?”

Aradia rests her chin on the windowsill. “What kind of stuff do you think the living have come up with?”

“Well, they’re probably all hooked up to a big computer by now. Probably have flying cars like in Back to the Future,” you say. She furrows her brow.

“Back to the Future?”

“It’s another movie. There’s barely any violence in that one, though, but it’s an interesting movie about time travel, if you want to see it,” you say. Aradia purses her lips.

“Time travel… Yes. I’d like to see it. Do they go back to the future in it?”

“They do, actually,” you say, and she nods, pleased.

“Then I’ll watch it.”

Just as she says that, the TV makes a sharp, electric noise, and dies. You get up and knock on the roof of it. Nothing. You check the wires, the power socket, the screen. Aradia watches as you do. This TV is well and truly dead. You open up the panel on the back ad find a disgusting stench of burnt rubber and metal. You’re not very tech-savvy, but you don’t think anyone could fix this thing. You look up at her. "Nevermind."

…

You’re sitting on a windowsill near the front of the house one day. The leaves are beginning to turn yellow outside. A black car drives into the front yard. You squint through the blinds at the letters written into the side of it and mutter to yourself. “SCREE - Skaia County Real Estate Experts.”

The name would make you laugh if it weren’t for how focused you were on the goings-on outside. A man in dark clothes steps out of the car. He walks through the yard and kneels into the grass in front of a wooden sign stuck to the ground. He struggles to remove it for a few minutes before the dirt gives way. The tall man brings the sign to his car and drives off. It’s been far too many years for you to recall that sign being put up, but you know exactly what it said. “For Sale.”

Dread begins to grow in your stomach.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for poppin in to read this today!
> 
> i don't have any social media accounts to promote but do feel free to comment


	4. The Sudden Appearance of an Insufferable Prick

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> everybody get ready for THIS fuckin guy

“Someone’s moving into your house?” Aradia asks, horrified. You nod, leaning on the windowsill.

“I think so, at least. Either that or they’re going to bulldoze it down. At this point, this place is probably old enough to qualify as a historical monument, so I’m really hoping it’s the former,” you say, bringing a hand up to run down the frame of the window. You remember the days when that paint was bright and brand new. Now it’s old and flaky, its color faded in the sun over the years. “The only thing I can think of worse than my current state is them building a spa or something here, and me having to watch tourists from the South soak up chlorine for the rest of my miserable afterlife.”

“Southerners,” Aradia says with about as much venom in her voice as she's capable of manifesting. You don’t know all that much about Aradia’s childhood, but you know that having been born a black girl in the mid-1800s, she has a virile and rational hatred for most of the American South.

Your breathy chuckle relaxes into a sigh. “Best case scenario, it’s some hippies trying to escape from the absolutely devastating city life into the comfort of Ohio’s deep, undulating asshole. Worst case scenario, we’ll both be haunting a fitness club pretty soon.”

…

Who'd have thought. You and Aradia were right.

They _are_ Southerners. 

The same real estate agent from a few weeks prior stands in the yard with two other people in front of him and two cars you don’t recognize in the driveway. You creak the front window open to get a good look. Outside, you distantly hear the Texan accent of the older newcomer. You’re pretty sure it’s thick enough to be considered syrup. He looks buff, mid-to-late 30s, wearing a backward cap and pointy-looking triangular sunglasses. Another guy stands beside him, clad in a red letterman jacket and a different, rounder pair of shades. He looks much younger- tall, skinny, and extremely disinterested in whatever the conversation is about. Maybe he’s just deadpan. Unlike the jumpy agent, the two seem totally cool-headed. The older one has a huge duffel bag slung over his shoulder, while the younger is holding on to a suitcase and carrying a backpack.

Pointy shades guy signs some sort of document. He gives a cursory, near-wordless command to round shades guy, who starts to trek up the hill to the door. You move away from the window and go halfway up the stairs to watch him enter. The door clicks open and creaks loudly as it does. The very first thing that you hear is a disappointed groan. “Oh, this place is just a shithole.”

You immediately don’t like this person.

Granted, you haven’t been able to take care of the house very well, given your ethereal state, but you’ve tried. There aren’t any broken plates on the ground and you’ve managed to at least regulate the rat stench that started to permeate the house however many years ago. You’ve even kept the tabletops tidy, and all he can say is call your home a shithole? What a douchebag.

You hop over the creakiest steps in the staircase to follow him through the house. He examines each broken window like a chef rating a meal. He checks each maintained and orderly kitchen cabinet (thank you very much) and finds them all full of rats. All the while, he’s humming some sort of rhythm to himself, index finger tapping absent-mindedly on his hip. He’s got one earbud in, with the other hanging idly at his chest. He must be carrying a Walkman or something of that ilk in his pocket.

His hair, styled into an undercut, is bleached, but not recently. The short hair on the sides of his head is dark brown, a color that is leaking into the roots of the roughly brushed mess on top. Closer up, you can tell his build is athletic, although he’s still thin as a hockey stick. His brown cheeks are covered with freckles. A small scar splits across one of his eyebrows. Another one lies among downy hairs on his chin. He carries himself loosely, but there’s still an aspect of immaturity, even anxiety, to the air he has about himself. He can’t be much older than you, if at all.

Basically, he looks like a fucking shithead.

The door clicks again and the older man comes in. You move out of his way and he glances at the ground where you did so, as though he could hear the tiniest creak in the floorboard. The younger guy seems to immediately have become more alert, and speaks in a mock-emotionless tone. “Place is covered in rat shit.”

“We’ll clean it,” the older man says, tone unreadable and face blank, and pushes past him into the kitchen. He closes the door behind him. Round shades guy stares at the door for a moment, but it seems that the conversation is over. As he wanders into the living room, you turn around and stick your head through the kitchen door. What you find is the older man stuffing swords into the cabinets, rats squeaking in distress while he tears their homes down. First of all, that seems not only unsafe but unsanitary as well. Second of all, holy shit, this dickwad! You’ve been keeping those cabinets clean for years now and he has the audacity to come in and start to mess shit up? You begin to formulate plans in your head to get him and the younger guy out. Before you can execute any of them, the duffel bag on the table catches your eye. It’s full of various close combat weapons as well as puppets with… disturbingly accurate genital anatomy. He fondles them lovingly, unaware of your mortification. You back out of the kitchen. He can have it for now.

The other guy is in the living room. He's removed the white sheet from the couch and placed it on the cushions next to himself, revealing the faded brown fabric beneath. The springs creak loudly every time he adjusts his sitting position. In his hand is a small, flat rectangle. Artificial-looking light glows on his face from it. He's busy tapping away at its screen, and his headphones are connected to it via a thin cable.

You drift closer and stand over him, peering at the screen. What greets you is an absolutely horrendous mash of colors like nothing you’ve ever seen. A bright eyesore of neon green, pink and yellow. Badly drawn bean creatures feature in what appears to be a comic created by someone that doesn’t know how eyes work. The text is barely readable. You’re struck with how immediately you need to get rid of the both of them. Round shades guy smiles to himself. Humor? Is this humor? Is this what modern humor is? If so, you’re glad you died.

The man with the triangular shades enters the living room. “Go put your shit upstairs.”

The guy on the couch nods, sliding the device in his pocket with a quick, smooth motion. Then he stands and brushes past the man, carrying his things. You can just press yourself against the wall to slide past round shades guy and rush up the stairs in front of him. The old wood complains beneath your weight. Round shades guy stops in his tracks and looks up in your general direction, eyebrows furrowed. You hold your breath and stay as still as you can. Finding nothing, he continues to move, and you do the same. 

You phase through the attic door and, like a snap, form as much of a body as you can to push against it. It’s a fruitless effort. The guy tries the door a couple of times, grumbles about ‘stank-ass old buildings,’ and then shoves the door so hard that you fly forward onto the ground. Bested again. Why doesn’t that ever work? You should get into doing cardio or something and build some muscle mass. If you could, you’d rent Buns of Steel from the video store. You scramble to the wall as his foot comes down on the exact spot your head was located moments earlier. You can’t die _again_, but you do still have some self-preservation instincts left.

The guy looks around, leering at the hole in the ceiling where the rain, snow and leaves have punctured through the insulation. He can kiss your ass. Let him try to take care of a house that he can’t leave for years and years and see how well he manages. He ignores tiny Prospit, instead opting to toss his backpack on the bed. From inside, he pulls a gray slab covered in stickers that depict more of those bean creatures from his handheld device. You watch with interest, ready to fuck his shit up if he tries to mess with your things. Luckily, though, he just sets the slab on the desk and takes a seat. 

You've taken special care to keep the attic clean and rat-free. It's been your only real sanctuary. This fucking guy seems to be content to take full advantage of that. He makes himself comfortable in your old chair and - you reel over this part - opens the slab, like a sideways book, revealing another screen bright with factory light. On it, you can see some sort of article that reads exactly like a tourist pamphlet.

"In the heart of Skaia County, the town of Prospit provides an affordable home for those seeking a fine place to live. With a rich history and a tight-knit community, whether for vacation or residence, Prospit is sure to be an invigorating place for you and your family." You scoff outright. Prospit is many things, but invigorating is not one of them.

Round shades guy closes the pamphlet, revealing instead another page of that horrid explosion of colors you saw on his handheld device downstairs. He picks his nose. You are so fucking glad that you’ll be spending your days with total sociopaths from now on.

…

This is uncomfortable.

Watching your uncle live his garbage life without knowing you were there and could see him was one thing, but as it turns out, it's even worse with complete strangers. If you were alive and you knew ghosts existed and were invisible to you, you could never be comfortable with yourself again. And even as is, you're not sure. Every burp, every gross bite taken out of disgusting takeout pizza, you have to deal with that shit. This is a hell created specifically for you.

The first morning after they arrived, you're sitting, hugging your knees on what used to be your bed. Oh, by the way, round shades guy has claimed your bed, so you had to spend the night huddled on the roof in the freezing wind. And he does sleep in those shades, for some incomprehensible fucking reason. He's currently pulling on the same shirt he wore the day before. Repulsive. You're laser-focused on a white sock he left on the floor and yelling at him. Your voice gets progressively louder as he goes about his business. "Pick it up. Pick up the sock!"

He goes downstairs, presumably to piss and brush his teeth. He closes the door behind him. Thank fucking god. You return your gaze to the sock. Would he notice if you moved it? It’s driving you insane. You get up and grab the sock. He probably won't notice. It's fine. There's an empty, unused trash can in the corner. You toss the sock inside. Boom. Laundry basket. On the fly, you also grab a pair of underwear from the previous night - eugh - and toss it too, trying to touch it as little as possible.

The stairs creak. You stay very still. He comes in, yawning, grabs his jeans and leaves again while pulling them on. Ngh. Teenage guys are so gross. You feel old. How old are you supposed to be? Are you middle-aged now? Elderly? You don't feel like it. You thought teenage guys were gross even when you were alive. You've changed remarkably little as a person.

You follow round shades guy downstairs. He's already in the hallway. You descend carefully to avoid being heard. Pointy shades guy is nowhere to be seen, but a single-use bowl full of Frosties and milk rests on the kitchen table. As round shades approaches it, you assume he's going to sit down and eat. So you're... let's say… mildly surprised when he instead pulls on a string you did not previously notice attached to the cereal bowl. This triggers a sword falling from the ceiling right towards the chair in front of the cereal. You are surprised again by this, and then by round shades guy grabbing it from midair. He uses it to inch the fridge open. A bunch of extremely sharp metal objects falls from inside. Careful to not step on any of it, he reaches inside and pulls out a plate with pancakes on it. At this point, you’ve entered a level of shock previously thought to be impossible.

He sits down to eat his pancakes. It takes you a few seconds to mentally process what you just saw before you start yelling. Round shades left the fucking fridge door open, and you stomp over to close it. Nearly all of the shelves that used to be inside have been removed and put god knows where. Knowing he can’t see you, you gesture wildly at the pile of metal now lying on the floor of your kitchen. “Who the hell are you people? Are you historians? Collectors? Weird nerds? What the fuck is your issue? You put fucking _swords_ in my _fridge_! Why are you here? I was expecting some mild and reasonable fucking redecoration, but you’ve turned my kitchen into a goddamn minefield!”

He hisses with pain and pulls a tiny shuriken from his mouth. His lip is bleeding. Jesus Christ. What a Rube Goldberg machine of physical endangerment.

You tire yourself out yelling at him and his motherfucking pancakes for probably fifteen minutes. He chews - open-fucking-mouthed, may you add - on them like he’s purposefully trying to spite you and messes with the rectangular device. Eventually, your voice gives out and you break out into a fit of coughs. He’s still just sitting there emotionless when you recover. You yell with frustration and walk out of the kitchen. 

In the hallway, you stand and lean your forehead against the wall. You’re this close to just sinking into it and trying to forget that you’re still here. The pointy shades guy enters the kitchen behind you. You only see him as a quick flash of movement in the corner of your eye. The man moves like a goddamn ninja. Who’s the real ghost here, huh? 

There are no voices or sounds inside the kitchen. In fact, the whole house is completely silent. You stare at the floorboards. As pointy shades guy leaves the kitchen behind you, you hear him speak. In his Texan drawl lies a deep frequency that radiates and permeates your whole nervous system, like a bass note playing at the root of your brain. Your neck aches sharply at the sound of it. “I’ll be home when you get back.”

A few moments later, there’s a click at the front door. You stand straight and check in on the kitchen. Round shades is messing with the remains of his pancakes before he gets up. You watch him pull on his letterman jacket and backpack and exit the house. Through the blinds, you watch him enter a red Honda and drive away from the yard. The car is smooth and round, with the paint on its roof shimmering in the cold autumn sun. When did they start making cars like that?

…

“I can already tell that both of them are total tools,” you complain to Aradia, leaning against the windowsill. She sits in the yellowing grass in the back yard, playing with the hem of her dress. The sun is hanging high up in the sky. “Like, they’ve only been here for one night, but they’ve already boobytrapped the whole house. The older one seems like he’s a hazard to everyone around him by the sheer ass-tickling volume of sharp objects he’s carrying around at any given time, and the younger one is just… gross. I would really rather not be a goddamn housekeeper to some fuckheads with no sense of hygiene. Like, I get the shower is probably broken by now, but it’s still _there_! Use it, Jesus! Now the whole house smells like cheap deodorant! Who thought teenagers were a good idea? I’m really starting to sympathize with the ghosts in horror movies.”

Aradia nods thoughtfully. “Maybe you should give them more time. The younger one, at least.”

“Oh, speak for your own fucking self! You’re practically made of time!” you snap. “I’ve wanted to get out as fast as I can the whole time I’ve been here, and even more so now.”

“I don’t know. I have a feeling these people will play a big role,” Aradia says. You scoff. Of course, she would think that. Everything carries meaning with Aradia. She’s never one to think of a coincidence as just that. You, in turn, stopped believing in fate a long, long time ago.

“A big role in my suffering, yeah,” you scoff. The front door clicks twice. Pointy shades guy walks into the living room with one of his porny puppets in one hand and a katana in the other. That’s… somewhat unsettling. More unsettling, though, is when he sets the puppet on the table and begins to move around so fast that you can’t even see what he’s doing. You and Aradia watch as he messes the room up completely. The table on which his puppet is sitting is moved to the wall, the TV disappears from its rightful place and is swiftly replaced with a different, flatter one, and worst of all, he dumps all of the books from the bookshelf into a garbage bag and begins to carefully place terrifying dolls and puppets all over the shelves. You gasp with rage. “My literature!”

“Oh no, the VHS player,” Aradia laments as you rush over to the garbage bag. All your novels lie in it, sadness in their usually so inspiring cover images, as though they haven’t kept you sane through countless nights of nothingness. With pointy shades guy in the room with you, you know you can’t get away with moving any of these right now. Instead, you choose to sit in front of the garbage bag and drape your body over it, glaring at him angrily like a mother hen guarding her eggs. As though that does anything to stop him from carrying it into the trash. You can’t really say that he can have them “over your dead body” anymore, either, can you?

You watch him set little traps all over. Here, a collection of blades on a surface that reasonably should not have blades on it. There, a soft puppet ass hiding a sharp metal object inside. He hangs a collection of very Japanese-looking knives from the lamp in the living room. He’s fucking the whole room up. You’ve made this place into the perfect ghost living room with your own two hands and he’s turning it into a nightmarish hellhole. He starts placing weird figurines on all the windowsills and even on top of the bookshelf. You don’t know what those are. You don’t want to know, actually.

When he finally leaves the room, you scramble to your feet and start rushing around the room gaping at all the horrid messes he’s made. You shake your head. Maybe now you can sneak these books, at least, to the attic and hide them away before he tosses all your stuff. Aradia looks from the window, concerned. You motion to the bag, frowning, and she nods. “I’ll go keep watch and distract him.”

That saint of a girl. She rushes out of sight towards the kitchen. Hopefully she doesn’t do anything too atrocious. You don’t want the living to know you’re here, lest they turn your house into a tourist spot. Plus, this does not seem like the kind of man you want to fuck around with. You start to slowly shift the trash bag towards the entrance of the living room. The kitchen door, cracked open ever so slightly, is right across the hallway. Inside, you can hear pointy shades guy moving around. You’re going to need a lot of tactical skill to do this.

You stand up and inch your foot beneath the bag and grab the handle. Inch by inch, you start to slide forward on the floor. You cannot go slowly enough. This is a highly stealth-reliant mission. Any creak too loud will alert him, and you don’t know what this man’s reaction will be to a garbage bag moving by itself. You try to tell yourself that you have all the time in the world. 

...No, yeah. Nevermind. You’re completely done after moving 2 inches. This is the most boring thing you’ve ever done. You pick the bag up and try to sidle to the stairs a little bit faster. When the floorboards creak beneath you, you freeze. Something is clearly preoccupying pointy shades in the kitchen- he doesn’t come to check on you. Your arms are trembling from the weight and exertion. You really wish you had Aradia’s telekinesis right about now. Or levitation, or _some_ sort of ghost superpower.

After a debilitating ten or so minutes of sneaking around carrying a giant bag full of books, you finally reach the attic and all but slam them on the bed. You take a deep breath. You feel sick and dizzy all of a sudden. There’s a weird feeling in your back, which you soon recognize to be aching in your muscles. Has it really been that long since you carried something this heavy?

You go down the stairs, tip-toeing. Clattering sounds from the kitchen helpfully inform you that pointy shades is still in there, so you pass through the hallway wall into the living room. Aradia peers in from the window. You give her a thumbs up.

…

It's been a few hours. You're reluctantly sitting on the new couch pointy shades dragged in to replace your old and well-loved one. You watch him zip around, setting up weird machinery, spreading his sex puppets all over the room (not a euphemism), plugging in wires. He really should check those power sockets first. You haven't exactly been keeping up with the maintenance.

Watching him mess up your orderly house has done a number on you. The corner of your eye has started twitching, but there’s not exactly anything you can do without getting found out. This isn’t like scaring kids or even drunk teens out of your house. If he found out there was a ghost, he might actually do something about it. The last thing you want is to get exorcised or worse, become a tourist attraction to fuel Prospit’s mummified economy. The front door clicks open. You see round shades guy enter the house with his backpack slung over his shoulder. Without saying a word, he immediately starts heading up the stairs. Pointy shades guy stops and tilts his head ever so slightly. "Moving van came."

Round shades doesn’t say anything in response, just makes a humming noise of acknowledgment. These are clearly men of very few words. You're tired of watching pointy shades ruin your perfectly good living room with his ridiculous porn-and-gore interior decoration project, so you drift upstairs after round shades guy.

He's set up that slab on the desk again. Could that be what computers look like nowadays? You’ve only seen a computer once, when you were alive, and it was decidedly larger than that thing. What round shades has there looks so flat. Then again, so did the new TV downstairs. Is “flat” the cool new thing in design now? You stand behind him and lean down to look at the screen. In one window, a movie is playing. On the other, there's some sort of conversation open, to which he occasionally writes a response. He writes in red text, while his correspondent writes in a pale lilac color.

TT: You can try to deny it, but I happen to know it for a fact.

TG: nah man ghosts aint real

TG: fr i think i woulda noticed if there was a ghost here

TG: like, shit movin around on its own? not check

TG: floatin sheets and shit? nada

TG: chains clattering, other ghostly shit, etcetra etcetra just cannot be found cos its not happening!

TG: you can try to convince me all you want rose but you wont succeed cos i know one of us is right (me) and the other is just a weird goth (you)

TT: Sigh. This is clearly a fruitless endeavor on my part.

TT: Fine, but when you get possessed like John did, you can't blame me for it.

TT: Good luck, I suppose.

TG: hold up hold up hold the phone for just one moment just lift it up to the heavens like youre the baboon and the phone is the baby lion hold it gently dont drop it now

TG: i know youre just tryin to get under my skin so ill believe your horseshit ghost stories but lets go back to that part where you said john got possessed cos id like to talk about that for a moment what the fuck does that mean

You're struggling to keep up. Nevermind about that 'men of few words' thing. 

TT: He did. Or, at least, he experienced something supernatural. I have no doubt that he would be happy to recount the event to you if you asked him.

TG: ok hold on for just a sec im verifyin your claims real quick

He clicks something and a different conversation replaces the one with the lilac text. This one starts off blank.

\-- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering ectoBiologist [EB] \--

TG: my dude and sick as heck brother

TG: rose is spreading some fat nasty rumors about your precious baby head i gotta check if this shit is true or total flighty broad horseshit before i pass judgment

EB: hey bro!

EB: yeah go for it!

TG: she says you got possessed by a ghost thats supposedly haunting my house like some sorta supernatural subtenant is this true circle yes/no

EB: oh

EB: uh

EB: kind of... i guess

TG: would you care to elaborate on that please mr egbert. the public is starving for this hot spicy lore youre killing the public mr egbert please just one question sir

EB: ha ha :B

Your neck starts to ache from the way you’re standing. As is, your head is hanging limp next to round shades guy’s and the top of your spine is twisted unnaturally. You straighten yourself and walk over to tiny Prospit. The model has become covered in a thin layer of dust. Next to it, the diamond you got from Aradia lays untouched on the table. You brush it with a fingertip. 

When you circle around the room and return to him, you only see a flash of the blue text before he taps the first conversation back open. New messages from the lilac text have appeared while you weren't looking.

TT: Yes, verify all you want.

TT: I'm not making this up. I wouldn't be so excited about this if I were.

TG: hate to burst your bubble but you dont seem that excited

TT: What'd he say?

TG: thats irrelevant what matters is im convinced you guys are pulling some sort of teamup prank on me

TG: wouldnt that just rule lets befriend the new kid and tell him his house is haunted cos its old and it sucks

TT: Such immature ploys are beneath me.

TG: youre not helpin your case

TG: anyway i have to set up my turntables and other equally cool shit ttyl

TT: Fine. Don’t think this conversation is over, though.

\-- turntechGodhead [TG] ceased being pestered by tentacleTherapist [TT] \--

You sigh in relief and let your shoulders drop when he closes out of the conversation. Round shades guy stands up from his seat at the desk and turns on his heels. He jumps a bit. It seems he only now noticed the garbage bag that wasn't on the bed when he left. He walks over to investigate, feet so light he makes no sound. Even under his shades, you can tell he's confused when he finds the bag to be full of romance books.

He looks around him like he's wondering if someone's watching him. You are, but he doesn't know that. He moves the bag and kicks it under the bed. You do wish he wouldn’t mistreat your belongings like that, but it's better than a landfill. To the now empty spot on the bed, he drags over the suitcase from the previous day.

The case clicks open, revealing a collection of technology. A pair of turntables, bundles of wires, and a square machine that looks utterly alien to you. It looks like a keyboard without letters. Round shades guy starts to remove them from the suitcase and lay them out on the bed, looking around for something. He looks straight at you. For a moment, fear strikes you, but then you realize he’s looking through you. His eyes have landed on tiny Prospit.

You move out of the way, watching him walk over to examine the table on which the model is laid out. It's certainly large enough for all of his crap. You stand by warily, ready to kick his ass if he tries to fuck it up. Sure enough, he goes to touch the miniature of the very house you’re in right now. You jerk and try to slap his hand away. Of course, yours passes through his arm.

"Agh! The hell?" he hisses, drawing his hand away immediately. Regardless, he goes to touch it again. You swat at his wrist. He withdraws his hand and shakes it off like he just touched a hot stovetop, muttering something to himself about weird air currents and Rose fucking with his head. Sighing, he gives up and returns to the bed.

You watch him haul the turntables into his arms and start back towards tiny Prospit. It seems your trick didn't discourage him enough. Well, you'll just have to make this harder for him. You knock the turntables out of his hand. They clatter to the floor. He stumbles, looking on with shock.

"Jesus!" For a moment round shades guy just stands there and stares, like he's afraid his things are going to grow legs and try to eat him. Then he shakes his head and picks them up again. "Relax, bro. Ghosts aren't real. She was just trying to get your extremely cool goat. She was pullin' your leg. Just a coincidence. Ghosts aren't real. Fucking placebo effect and all that shit. No ghosts in the Strider house. Strider house's too cool for ghost shit. Ghosts peaced right the fuck out when this cool dude waltzed in here."

You find it hard to believe he actually talks like that. Is it an acquired skill? Did he go to school for it? Poor guy looks like he’s about to shit his pants. His face has an aggressively forced deadpan expression, but he's sweating bullets, so that's not hiding anything. 

Balancing the turntables between the wall and his hip, round shades guy - Strider, he’d called himself - goes to pull the entirety of tiny Prospit off the table. Panic strikes your spine like lightning and you grab him by the waist to pull him away from the table. You haven't ever tried to actually hold a living person before, but clearly, they function just like anything else. He stumbles backward and falls onto his ass, desperately trying to grab his turntables from midair to save them from the floor. He 'oofs' when he lands on his ass, holding the machinery to his chest. For a moment, the guy’s shoulders are incredibly tense as he recovers from the fall. Then he relaxes and sighs, pushing himself up to his knees with one hand.

With his face perfectly on the level of the table’s surface, you see Strider’s eyebrows shoot up from behind his huge aviators. He pushes himself up and grabs the diamond from the desk, bringing it up to his face, examining it. It reflects faint light onto the lenses of his shades. There’s a pit in your stomach all of a sudden. That thing would have been worth a fortune when you were alive. Chances are that hasn’t changed. You leap at him without a care in the world for whether or not he notices you, desperately trying to grab it out of his hand. You aren’t letting him take Aradia’s gift away from you like he’s trying to do to everything else.

Everything is a flashing mess of black and light and fabric in your face. You and Strider scramble for a bit, your weight on him pushing him against the wall. You both yelp as Strider falls on his ass and hits the back of his head on the wall. The diamond rolls out of his hand and under the table. You crawl after it into the space between the floor and the wood. 

As you turn, you find Strider’s already on the other side of the room, back to the opposing wall, and to your shock, he’s holding a sword. You have no clue where he pulled it from. You would, again, be taken aback by the sheer volume of swords these two own if you weren’t preoccupied with the fear in his face and body. His whole body is trembling, flattened against the wall like a mouse caught by a cat. He’s like a leaf in the wind. His voice - normally a strong, flat tenor - is nothing but a weak wheeze. “Bro?”

No response. Whether he was calling for help or something else is lost on you. You hold your breath and clutch the diamond, holding it tight against the floor. Strider breathes out heavily after fifteen or so seconds. He slumps down to the floor, cradling his head in his hands. While he’s not looking, you stand up and place the diamond back in its rightful place.

After that, Strider gives up on trying to set his turntables on top of tiny Prospit. He covers the whole town up with a bedsheet instead.

…

The shades brothers are making themselves well and thoroughly at home. Strider hauls in a dozen or so cinderblocks from outside and just… places them in his room. For no reason. Well, some of them he does use to craft a desk for his turntables, but most of them just lie around like he’s _trying_ to get you to trip over them. It drives you insane. Why the fuck have them here if he’s not using them for anything?

Of course, that’s not even the base of the cake, no no; more disturbing than that is his hobby of decorating his room with terrifying dead shit preserved in jars. Not that you’re not used to dead shit. Even Aradia’s hobbies notwithstanding, it would be quite hypocritical of you of all people. It’s just that the fucking jars make it all so much worse. It’s like they’re sleeping. What is he, a mad scientist? Curled up in his attic lab amidst dozens of slumbering mummy fetuses? He’s added a bunch of tables and shit into places that didn’t have tables and shit before and you keep bumping into them and knocking his shit on the floor. And when you do, he takes maybe a few milliseconds to react.

Oh, yeah, now that you mention it, he’s paranoid as fuck too. Every time you so much as breathe on something, he gets up and pulls out a sword from one of the places he has them hidden. Behind a poster with weird green aliens on it is one, another is lodged between the wall and the bed, a third is jammed into a dresser drawer. Who is he gearing up to fight? It isn’t you, that’s for sure. Despite how insufferable he is, you don’t particularly want to fight him. You’ve stubbed your toe a few times, not to mention your constant and never-ending neck and shoulder pains, so you know you can get hurt. You’d rather not find out what getting stabbed in the heart in this state feels like.

It’s not just swords that he likes to hide anywhere he can. It’s food, too. The amount of times you’ve been sitting, zoning out in his room and seen him get up and pull a bag of Doritos from his dresser or a box of cornflakes from behind his desk is ridiculous. He’s got snacks in the hallway, in the living room, in the staircase- it’s like he thinks the apocalypse is imminently about to arrive and he needs to ration absolutely everything. 

You’ve seen him squirrel them away, too. When he comes home from school, you can spot him opening his backpack and pulling out an absolutely ridiculous amount of non-perishable fast foods. Mountain Dew, cans of Coke, Lay’s bags that look different than they did when you were alive, Lucky Charms. He hides them all over the house, blind to the outraged expressions and offensive gestures you shoot his way.

…

The older one is a bit of a mystery to you, and not in a good way. You’ve heard Strider call him “Bro,” to his face and to friends over the computer, but the actual nature of their relationship and what either of their first names is are both still unknown to you. His face seems to be made of stone. You’ve never seen him so much as twitch an eyebrow. He’s almost never at home, and when he is, you can barely catch a glimpse of him. The man moves like an absolute shadow. You kind of feel like your house is haunted, and you’re not the one doing the haunting.

The few things you do know about him don’t improve your perception of him, either. He owns at least three times as many blades and exotic weapons as the younger Strider does - why swords? Wouldn’t guns be more effective, anyway? - and he litters them all over like cheap plastic in a public park. It’s like living in an actual dumpster. You’ve decided to permanently avoid opening any doors or drawers just in case.

The puppets are creepiest thing, though. He leaves them everywhere. You can’t turn blink without seeing some weird Muppets with their faces in each other’s asses smack dab on your windowsill. It’s vomit-inducing. At least when it was teenagers making your life uncomfortably sexual, you could sympathize with them being horny. You can understand that! But this is just not coherent or comprehensible! The worst part might just be the fake blood capsules he puts inside them. Seeing a puppet get torn to shreds in a blender is one thing. Seeing a puppet become a gory red smoothie is another.

Having living people in your house fucking it up is bad enough, but when they’re the kind of mentally damaged, sociopathic dickweeds who leave their repulsive, plush smut puppets all over your carefully maintained living room, it’s even worse.

…

A few days after the tiny Prospit incident, you’re in the hallway, examining your hands. The feeling of disgust is overwhelming. The callouses on the palms of your hands are old and nasty. Was your skin always this desaturated? It looks repulsive. As a ghost, you have a lot of time to ruminate on the imperfections of your appearance. The door clicks and there’s a clatter as Strider pushes into the house carrying a huge black box. He carries it past you and takes a surprising turn down the stairs to the basement. You furrow your brows and pass through the floor in pursuit.

Sure enough, as he clambers down, he places the box atop a tower of other boxes full of your uncle’s old VHS tapes. You’re tall enough to just maybe be able to see inside the box if you tiptoe, but for him, it’s on the same level as his face. Strider looks around the cramped space of the basement, biting his lip. He mumbles to himself. “It’s a bit small, but I can work with that. Hah. That’s what she said.”

He’s still laughing to himself as he clicks the box open. If your current facial expression had a name, it would be “Someone Please Tell Me How to Say Fuck You Without Speaking.”

Strider starts to move shit around as though he’s building some sort of workstation. Cardboard boxes turn into desks and tables, others are moved out of the way and stacked into precarious towers in the corners of the room. Mattresses are placed carefully between the walls and the “desks.” It’s cramped as hell. You’re watching him while standing waist deep in box. You don’t like to spend a lot of time inside objects just for your own comfort, but this is too fascinating and dangerous for you not to supervise.

Strider brings a large plank from upstairs and places it on top of his makeshift box-desk, creating a stable and flat platform. He used the same admittedly clever trick upstairs with the cinderblocks. You admire his engineering skills, but let it be known that doesn’t mean goodwill is what is taking place here. He pulls devices from the box and sets them up - an enlarger, a safelight, a tank of some sort - and soon you realize what he’s building. He’s making a darkroom.

Once he’s finished, you see him actually smile. He’s genuinely pleased with himself. And you know, he actually didn’t do all that bad of a job.

…

The Strider brothers continue to live their strange life and you continue to suffer because of it. They’ve been here for some time now, a few weeks at least, and you’ve practically become round shades Strider’s personal janitor. Whenever he leaves the room, you gather up all the empty Coke cans and plates he’s left behind. You pick up dirty socks and shirts and put them in your makeshift laundry basket when he’s not looking. When you’re certain neither of the two is in the house, you do their laundry for them, because Strider certainly isn’t interested in doing it. Let’s not cut corners here. The man is disgusting. And the things you’ve seen him do… you’ve never hated being a ghost in this house more. On the third day, he dipped a Cheeto into apple juice. You nearly vomited. You didn’t know that was still physically possible.

Very slowly, you smooth out a crease in Strider’s blanket. A Double Death of boredom is rushing towards you and it’ll be here any second if you don’t get something done in this house. You’re not about to just hang out while Strider and Bro go about their business. Bro’s weird puppets creep you the hell out, so you’ve taken to holing up here in the attic with Strider. You go downstairs to talk to Aradia on occasion, but this is where you spend most of your time. Unfortunately, so does he. He’s currently sitting at his computer, back turned to you. You can’t move fast at all. It takes you about ten minutes to smooth one crease in the blanket.

What’s he doing, anyway? You look up over his shoulder. Lilac text scattered around his red. Oh, that’s not good. Of his friends, Rose - the lilac text one - seems to be the one most obsessed with you, which you don’t appreciate at all. She’s brought you up a few times before, and you doubt she’s going to drop it just like that. You give up on the blanket business and sneak over to take a look. Some parts of you ticks in to remind you that personal privacy is still a thing, but this is your house, so you tell that part to fuck off.

TT: In any case, if you would just listen to my evidence, I think you’d find I have great amounts of it and you would be very convinced.

TG: no

TT: I can make a slideshow.

TG: no

TT: An informative video, then?

TG: absolutely not

TG: rose it doesnt matter how much you bug and fuss and meddle im not letting you in my fuckin house

TG: nothing weird has even happened since i set up my turntables i bet if there even was a ghost which there wasnt because they dont exist he would have been scared off by my ice cool striderian ways

TG: that ghost cant even handle this level of irony its undeveloped caveman brain is stuck on no irony whatsoever

TG: its a well established fact magics fuckin fake as hell and thats really all there is to say on the matter

TT: You are a chore.

TT: I could revolutionize the study of death and prove the concept of life after death and all you care about is being ironic. Sigh.

TG: listen i like creepy dead shit as much as the next cool dude but ill meaning spirits arent on that level theyre so many levels ahead theyve already 100% the game

TG: besides maybe i just like my privacy huh have you thought of that lalonde 

Oh, goddamit, Strider. You shake your head as he writes out the very thought you had moments earlier. It’s fine! He doesn’t know. He doesn’t care. He’s just trying to get Rose to leave him alone.

TT: A need for privacy is certainly a trait that would manifest from your deep-seated issues, I admit. But that’s neither here nor there.

TG: oh shut up you freudian motherfucker youve known me for two weeks

TG: i have no deep seated issues at all and if they did they wouldnt be even close to being your business

TG: im totally cool and chill. no repressed anxiety here you know this im totally chill just vibin yknow

TT: God.

TT: That’s not important right now.

TT: I can’t believe you’re making me do this, but here goes. Please? A pretty one, with a cherry on top and all that. Just for a little bit.

TG: maybe if you grovel a bit more

TT: I’ll advertise SBaHJ on my blog if you let me come take notes on your ghost.

TG: notes on my ghost huh

TG: wink lenny face

TT: I’m serious.

TG: hmmmm

TG: im considering it

Oh no.

Lightning fast, you turn on your heels. You’re met with the cinderblock desk where he keeps as much expensive crap as he can balance. You need some way to get him off the computer. How about… this. This looks important. You grab the letterless keyboard and toss it on the ground carelessly. It clatters, grabbing Strider’s attention from the screen. As he gets up to retrieve it, you circle around him to the computer and start typing. 

TG: NO ABSOLUTELY NOT

TG: i mean no absolutely not

TG: you can’t come to my house. it’s not an option

TT: What? Why?

TG: reasons

TG: very important reasons i can’t let you into my house sorry to tell you this

Strider sets the slab back on top of the turntables, taking the time to make sure it’s not going to fall off. You practically leap away from the computer to make space for him. What he finds perplexes him. Of course it does. This was the stupidest plan of attack you could possibly come up with, you goddamn tool. You give your forehead an intimate introduction to the palm of your hand and slam your face to the wall, too, just for good measure. The spike of pain in your neck causes an embarrassingly high-pitched noise to rise from your throat.

TT: Okay, well, I don’t know what made you change your mind so quickly, but all right.

TT: Keep your secrets.

TG: uh

TG: yeah no i dont remember sending those messages

TT: …

TT: Are you trying to prank me right now?

TG: no i swear to god my launchpad fell of my table and i got up to put it back and when i came back those were there

TT: It’s not funny.

TG: im not fucking pranking you im kind of freaking out holy shit

TT: Oh.

TT: Oh!

TT: This is incredible.

TT: I’m certain of it now. You must believe me. There’s a ghost in your house. Please, I’m begging you, let me come investigate the ghost.

TG: ghosts arent fucking real rose!

TG: bro is probably pranking me

TT: Would he do that, pray tell?

Strider sits back in his chair for a few moments without writing.

TG: no

TT: It’s the ghost.

TG: theres no ghost jesus christ rose

TG: okay! fine! come over but not today

TT: How about tomorrow?

TG: well bro wont be home for this weekend so

TG: if itll get you off my ass

TG: take a moment to consider my poor ass rose its currently a rodeo horse for your nonsense

TG: my ass is tired rose pity a man and his weak ass

TT: Whether or not I get off your “weak” and “heterosexual” ass depends on what I find.

TT: I’ll see you tomorrow.

\-- tentacleTherapist [TT] ceased pestering turntechGodhead [TG] \--

TG: oh for fucks sake

Great job once again, Vantas. You’ve just doomed yourself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm really starting to sympathize with authors who lament about pesterlog formatting in the author's notes


	5. Ghosts Aren't Real, Rose

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey everyone! sorry if this chapter is less polished than the other ones. this week has been kicking my ass mental health-wise, so it took a long time to get this chapter to a place where i liked it. all your supportive feedback has absolutely been keeping me sane for the last 7 days or so and i really appreciate it! i'm running out of ways to thank you individually in the comments GH just. thank y'all so much for reading this!! this is a chapter i've been really excited to get out despite what an unfortunate time it came at so. i hope you enjoy it!
> 
> also HHH homestuck 2 is out and i'm extremely terrified. i haven't read it yet and i probably won't for a while so it won't factor into my writing in this fic jsyk!

You sit on the staircase, staring at the front door, counting the seconds. When the bell rings, you stand up and rush into the attic. Behind you, you hear Strider walking over from the bathroom. He’s still holding his toothbrush as he unlocks the door, clad in the same shirt he slept in. Of course, he had no time to change when he woke up. After Bro left the previous night, Strider seemed to completely let loose, and god, do you hate him for it. The amount of nights you’ve spent hanging out on the roof because the rest of the house is unbearable is starting to stack up.

You walk through the wood of the attic door, the sounds of Rose and Strider’s conversation becoming muffled behind you. You try to block them out. Maybe if you ignore the problem, it’ll go away. You fall on your back onto your - now Strider’s - bed. It feels unfamiliar now, new textures and lingering smells in the linen making it all but foreign. The door clicks open. “...telling you, nothing’s happened since the day we moved in and that shit wasn’t even supernatural or anything. Not that I’ve been staying up to try and catch the ghosts Paranormal Activity style. Like, I don’t doubt that your insane witch ass would but obviously my head’s far too cool, like frozen Antarctica levels of cool, so I’m not losing any sleep over this-”

“Would you stop trying to convince me that I’ve gone mad?” Rose says, ever so slightly frustrated. Now that you see her, something about her looks… familiar. Short, blonde, wearing a headband. There’s an aura of curiosity about her, a look in her eyes that tells you she’s here for answers and she won’t leave without them. You stand up and stand behind the door out of the mortals’ sight. Rose sighs. “This is the table where you said the ‘cold air current’ was?”

“Yeah. You know, old house. Probably some holes in the walls and shit.”

“Quite a strange location for a phenomenon like that,” Rose says to herself. 

“Listen, Lalonde, you can investigate all you want, but unless you can pull an actual ghost out of the woodwork, I seriously doubt that you’re going to convince me of anything. I gotta see evidence. Genuine. Scientific research. Falsifiable proof, y’know?” Strider says, relaxed, and leaves Rose to search tiny Prospit’s table for clues. He walks past you and lies on the bed.

“Glad to know you were listening when they explained the scientific process back in fifth-grade Biology,” Rose says. Strider shrugs slightly. There’s a sound of shuffling behind the door. He strains his neck to see what she’s doing. “I know you think I’m insane, but there’s a ghost in this house. I’ve seen it myself. As god above is my witness, I’ll find you your proof.”

“Is that a fucking spellbook?” Strider asks.

“It’s a grimoire,” Rose says. Oh, shit. Could it be real?

“Wow, fuck. I knew you were a weird pagan, but you have a goddamn grimoire? Oh my god, Rose, this is taking the goth aesthetic to another level,” Strider laughs, wheezing, and turns over so he has a better view of Rose. “I thought before that you were knee-deep in this culty shit but apparently you’re down to your neck in it. You’re practically drowning, sister, how are you still alive?”

“Eye of frog, thunder’s bellow,” Rose begins to speak over him, voice steadfast. Strider, amused, says something to himself about how she’s actually doing it. Rose’s voice grows louder and more powerful. It feels like your head is a mirror maze in which the spell is bouncing around. It’s deafening. Although Strider seems unaffected, his expression becomes less humorous. “Leaf of bay, spices mellow. Scale from fish and lemon yellow, goose’s flight and ginger’s freckle. In this house, you, quiet echo- come, grow louder, hear our beckon!”

Nothing happens.

Wow, some witch she is.

“Oh wow, I feel so corporeal,” you mock out loud, loud as ever. This is a decision you come to regret immediately as Rose gasps.

“Did you hear that?” she says in an instant. Strider lifts his eyebrows. Rose stomps over. The floorboards creak beneath her frustrated steps. “That voice! Didn’t you hear that?”

“I didn’t hear fuckall. Magic’s fake, just like I said,” Strider says, yawning. While he speaks, your legs start trembling. Did Rose… hear you? If she did, you’d better ask Aradia for advice. You try to sneak past her as Strider speaks, but she shushes him loudly and turns around. She’s taller than you by about half an inch, so you’re basically on eye level with her and extremely close to her face. Her eyes are a cold and sharp lilac that pierces into yours, and her face is full of shock, curiosity and awe. A feeling runs down your spine like a bullet to the skull, something piercing and sharp and seeing.

She lifts up a hand and points at you. “It’s right there.”

You book it down the stairs. She can see you, at least on some level, and you can’t deal with that. Panicked thoughts rush around your head. What if they tell someone? Would somebody believe them? Will Strider even believe _her_? You rush to the kitchen window. Aradia’s nowhere to be seen. You’re suddenly so conscious of your voice that you can’t bring yourself to call out for her. You’ve never been a quiet ghost; you yell and curse all the time even just to yourself, but now your voice is stuck in your throat.

Sounds of Strider and Rose coming down the stairs and walking towards your position make you so anxious - blood rushing in your ears. You back into a corner where you won’t be immediately noticed. Their conversation carries over to your ears. “Listen, I admit there were weird noises in the stairs, but that doesn’t mean that ghosting is what’s taking place here.”

“That was not the fucking wind, okay?” Rose says sharply. “You refuse to take pictures even though you know I’m onto something! It’s like you’re scared that I’m right!”

“I’m not scared!” Strider insists.

“If you weren’t, you’d help me prove that there’s a ghost in your house!”

“Okay, Jesus fucking Christ! Fine! I’ll help! But I’m not wastin’ my precious camera film on this shit. Like, if we had some sort of surveillance system that was already in place and we could exploit it then ma-” Silence.

“...Why’d you just stop talking?” Rose asks.

“Bro’s webcams.”

“Bro’s what?”

Bro’s _what?_

As you hear the footsteps rush into the living room, you follow them. Strider is reaching up to grab one of those freaky figurines from the top shelf of the bookshelf. “He sets these up to record smuppet shit in the house live. He won’t mind if we just check them out real quick.”

“I’m starting to understand why you are the way that you are,” Rose breathes as Strider messes with the figurine. Is it… a camera? 

“Look, I can hook this up to my laptop and check the footage.” Strider’s eyebrows are furrowed, like he’s actually taking this seriously. “If there’s a ghost here, we’ll find it with this. We’ll Paranormal Activity this shit for real. Just you, me, and a goddamn camera recordin’ me sleep that good shit dreamin’ of the coolest sheep you’ve ever seen ‘cos it’s true, cool dudes do dream of awesome sheep.”

“I- Wait, is there one of these in your bedroom?” 

Their voices fade up the staircase. You wait a few minutes, trembling, before you follow them, and it feels like a goddamn eternity. Quiet words mumbled inside. You peer in through the partially open door. Rose is huddled closely next to Strider at the desk in the attic, one hand next to the laptop holding part of her weight and the other draped over the backrest of Strider’s chair. Together, they cover the screen up so much that you can’t see what they’re doing.

“There, there, go back.” Rose points at the screen. “Watch the bag of books. It’s like it’s… being pulled along by someone.”

“Holy shit. That bag’s in my room!” Strider says, leaning back, running a hand through the mess of hair on his head.

“It is?” Rose gapes.

“Yeah, what the fuck, right? It’s full of weird corny romance books. A few days after we came here, the day the moving van showed up, it just appeared on my bed out of nowhere. I was like, did Bro leave this here? Like, as a charity donation to me? I thought about throwing them away, but I wasn’t sure, so now they’re just under there.” He points a finger at the bed in the corner of the room, feigning composure. You groan at yourself and rub the bridge of your nose. How the hell were you supposed to know that you were being recorded?

“Oh my god,” she says. “What about the laundry basket that vanished?”

“Bro wasn’t home that day,” Strider heaves and starts scrubbing through the recording. “Look, holy shit- look at the hallway.”

The junior detective duo huddles up at the computer again. Some sort of video plays, but you can’t see much of it from between their heads. “It’s fucking floating!”

Vantas, you motherfucking oaf, you carried the laundry basket from the attic downstairs and back. You’re shaking with fear, and you don’t know why. Everything’s been torn from you and now they know you’re here. Your privacy, your safety, the only thing you have- they might tear that away too. Rose scribbles something on a notepad. Strider laughs in a broken, terrified way. “This prank is getting out of hand, Rose.”

“We can’t let your Bro see these,” Rose says. “If he leaks this stuff online, we could be- oh my god, can you imagine? Reality TV would make this house their home.”

That sounds like a nightmare scenario. Strider says to Rose, “That sounds like a nightmare scenario.”

“We have to take the webcams down.”

“What? No! Bro would kill me!”

“It’s for science, he’ll understand,” Rose says. Strider’s head moves in a way that you can only construe as an eye roll of acrobatic proportions. Rose turns around and starts heading for the door. You jump, like you’d been caught eavesdropping- your skin itches, waiting for a strike that isn’t going to come. Scrambling, you leap down the stairs two steps at a time. Your breath is wholly caught in your throat. You can’t breathe. Every muscle is taut and weary. It feels just like the day you died all over again. “I think it was listening in on us.”

“It was?” Strider squeaks. 

You dash into the laundry room and lock the door behind you, falling against the wall, crying and shivering. Every noise outside the door makes you flinch.

…

When your panic subsides enough for you to walk without feeling like you’re skating on jello, the sun is coming up. Again. You’ve been in here for at least a full 36 hours. You breathe deep and shaky and open the door with a click. Strider is standing in the hallway, pulling his backpack on. He turns to look in your direction immediately. “Bro?”

“No, it’s me, asshole,” you scoff, trying to pretend like the wobble in your voice isn’t there. No response, just his blank face looking around the hallway. He still can’t see or hear you, unlike Rose.

“Look, if there’s actually a ghost there, do me a favor and fuck off to fantasyland, wouldcha?” Strider says, brushing past you with ease. “Go haunt Rose or someone who actually gives a shit.”

The front door closes behind him before you can respond. He addressed you, and that makes panic bubble up in your chest. After a moment, you lean against the wall. Fuck these stupid, irrational emotions. You turn and walk to the back of the house. For how much the Striders have ruined your house, they still haven’t fixed the broken fucking windows. You stand in the kitchen, sliding the glass out of the way. The cold wind rushes on your face from inside and plays with your hair. It almost feels refreshing.

Aradia peeks her head out from behind the treeline and slides down the muddy hillside to where you’re standing. She looks worse than she did when you last saw her some days ago. “You’re back.”

“Sorry. I was freaking the fuck out,” you admit. “I locked myself in the laundry room for like two days. Aradia… A living person saw me.”

“What?” Aradia asks, shellshocked in that same empty way as everything else she does. She leans her head on the barrier. “Is that possible?”

“I guess it has to be, fuck! I thought all those ‘I saw a ghost blah blah my house is haunted’ assholes on TV were all bullshitting, but she- she heard me speak, Aradia, and I know I’m loud but I don’t think my voice is strong enough to carry all the way to the other fucking side!” you say, pacing around the kitchen. “I’m losing my shit over this! She can see me and hear me, but luckily she seems to be the only one able to- hey, also, by the way, just so we’re on the same page here, apparently my life has been recorded ever since those fucking clowns showed up and started tearing this place a new asshole! So, you know, no safety for me, I guess!”

Aradia is wholly deadpan. “Have you not you spying on the younger one’s conversations?”

“That’s different!” you snap back. Aradia sighs. 

“Is it so terrible to be seen? I thought that you hated being invisible to people,” she says softly. You open your mouth to protest and then close it again when you find yourself with nothing to say. “I know that you are scared, but if she has not shown any sign of wanting to hurt you, perhaps you should… speak with her?”

You stop in your tracks and just stare at her. Her advice is actually reasonable, which is to be expected, but you’re not really in the mood for reasonable advice right now. You’re in the mood to break something. Maybe yell some more. Of course, you can’t just yell at Aradia- she’s looking at you with her wide, calm eyes and her kind, blank face and you think maybe you’re starting to feel a little bit better. You let your shoulders relax and walk back over to her. “If she comes back… I’ll humor her.”

Aradia smiles shyly. “That’s progress.”

…

It’s been maybe a week or two since Rose’s first visit. During that week, you’ve seen Strider take down the last of the “webcams,” as they were called. He’s been grabbing them from the kitchen and from under the couch and all the other places they were stashed. You’ve also seen Bro looking for them, checking all the places Strider had gotten to before him, but not seeming to react at all- of course not.

That day, you’re in the living room with your head against the front window. The cold air outside seeps through and cools your already cold skin. Bro’s cranked up the heat to the max and your Ohioan ass can’t handle it. He left the house a while ago carrying some sort of case. You don’t know what he packed in it. You don’t care. You’re bored out of your mind. Even with Strider confiscating his brother’s cameras, you don’t feel safe enough to reclaim your books from the attic, so you’re stuck just sitting here. Pondering the bullshittitude of your situation.

Through the blinds, you watch the younger Strider’s car pulls into the driveway. He gets out with his backpack in tow. Running a hand through the mess on his head, he looks worried about something. You’ve found that despite his insistence that he’s a “cool dude” who has “no time for emotions n shit like that,” Strider’s moods are rather easy to read, especially if he thinks he’s alone.

Up the hill and into the house. His movement and his motions are routine and casual, and yet he looks around himself all the while like he's waiting to be ambushed. His finger taps the nervous beat of the song echoing in his earbuds. He walks out of sight. Moments later, a yelp and soft thumps echo in the kitchen. You let out a deep, beleaguered sigh. Every fucking day.

You find him on the floor, having been sneak-attacked by a deluge of ductile doll dong. He makes a weak whining noise from beneath the plentiful plush puppet penis and tries to scramble out of that loathsome pile. This is more shit you’re going to have to clean up. He never checks before opening any cabinets whatsoever. How has he not learned by now that he’s living with a madman? Maybe he’s just bored of it by now.

Strider pulls himself free and finds a piece of paper among the smuppets. It’s so small that you can’t make out what the black and red text on it reads, but clearly whatever Bro has written is important. Strider rises to his feet, grabs his backpack and leaves as fast as he came in. He does this rapidly, with jerky movements, like something is about to happen.

Something about it is familiar in a distant and terrifying way.

It’s not even an hour later that he comes home. He looks like shit.

You almost don’t recognize him when he stumbles in through the front door. He’s taking long, ragged breaths. His shadow is cast on the ground by the cold sun behind him like a punishment, and it reaches all through the hallway to the back door. His face is covered in ugly, red bruises. Grasping weakly at his arm where blood is seeping through the sleeve of his shirt, he limps through the hallway and into the bathroom and locks himself inside. You watch from the staircase. Something feels wrong.

You don’t want to go in. God knows the last thing you need is to see Strider naked or something. But there’s an itch beneath your skin. A feeling of worry that picks at your nerve endings. Your head is dizzy and aching. You step through the door.

Strider is on the toilet cover. He's rolled his sleeve up, revealing a nasty, deep cut on his arm. It's about an inch long and screaming red- too big to have been an accident, unless he fell on a rake or something. Only now do you see that the rest of his arm is scarred similarly. Long cuts and bruises, some older than others, pierce and soil the speckling of freckles on his skin in seemingly random spots. The first aid kit is on the sink, spread out- bandages and bandaids and antiseptic that's definitely out of date by now. Everything is stained red- his hands, his clothes, his arm. A deep-seated memory tugs at your mind.

What the hell happened to him?

He hisses through his teeth, holding a rag gently to the cut. You watch him take the same steps you've taken many times- with shaky hands, he runs water over his arm, leaning hard on the sink. He looks in the mirror. When he sees his face, Strider brings up a tentative hand the newly formed red bruise on his cheek and winces. The water stops running and he turns his attention back to the cut. "Is this thing gonna need stitches?"

"Yes," you whisper harshly. He doesn't hear you.

The sounds of him hissing in pain while he sews up the wound are too much for you. You don't stay and watch him. You can’t- you feel sick to the core. Instead, you leave and go up the stairs. In the attic, you used to hide medicine just in case.

The painkillers are still where you left them all those years ago, between tiny Prospit and the table it lies on, right beneath the church.

You place them in front of the bathroom door. He's going to have more use of them.

…

Strider brings his friends over every now and then. Not too often. You get the feeling Bro doesn't like visitors.

Strider and his friends sit on the bed in the attic. Strider's computer is set up in front of them with two controllers plugged in, like it's a TV. Strider is playing what must be a video game with one of said friends- John, he's called. He's 5'7" and you can barely make out the color of his skin from beneath his acne. Their two female friends, Rose and Jade, sit by. Jade is cheering them both on.

"Oh, dude, you suck at this," Strider says, laughter in his voice. The letters "KO" flash on the screen. "Who even picks fuckin' Vegeta? Out of all the options you picked Vegeta for your team? Egbert. I'm disappointed."

"Shut up! He's cool!" John - the blue text friend - says. "At least I don't want to fuck Goku!"

"Dude, what? Ew!" Strider says, shoving Egbert in the shoulder and captures his head in a noogie. Both of them are laughing. "Don't say that shit about me in front of Rose!"

"Oh, as though I needed to be told to know this," Rose says. For once, she's not interested in looking for you. Still, she's just as intimidating as the day you first met her. Jade chortles. Her glasses slide down her nose. Strider starts to protest in mock offense and John and Jade laugh while he debates with Rose. They look so happy.

Something stings in your chest. Could that have been you? Laughing, teasing. Being friends. Close to someone like that. Happy with someone like that. You dare to imagine what it would have been like to hang out with them. To belong as they do. Tears burn your eyes. Why do they get to what you never had on the bed that used to be yours?

…

You haven’t spoken to Aradia much as of late. You feel bad about it, really, you do. It’s just… you don’t want to go down there as much anymore. When Bro’s at home, everything below the fourth stair turns into a potential deathtrap. And even though the cameras are probably all gone now, you can’t shake the feeling of being… watched. The attic and the roof are the only places you feel safe from that.

Too bad that douchebag Strider seems to feel the same way.

“You’ve been yelling a lot,” Aradia says. You’ve cracked the window open. It’s so cold now that the glass is covered in swirls of frost. She traces patterns into them with a fingertip. They don't melt. “I’ve heard you inside. I don’t think it’s good for your throat.”

“Strider’s a douchebag, he deserves to hear it,” you tell her sharply. Aradia meets your eyes. There’s an empty sorrow somewhere deep in them.

“Could we do something again? Like we used to before they came here?” she asks. Though it wouldn’t be evident to most, you can tell she’s lonely. Sharp feelings pierce your heart, knowing you haven’t been there for her. You’re so selfish, Vantas, so selfish. She’s your responsibility, and you’ve been neglecting her.

“I… I want to, but…” you try to explain. “Everything is so difficult with them here.”

Aradia looks down. Your chest tightens with sympathy. The breath you let out, racking your brain, is deafening.

“Tell you what. It’s not Raiders of the Lost Ark or even Back to the Future, but tonight, if you come here, I’ll be on the roof. We can sit and talk and look at the stars like we used to. How’s that sound?”

Finally, a blessed, shy little smile. “I’d like that.”

…

It takes some special maneuvering on your part not to wake Strider up while you stand on his bed and climb to the roof. The sky is a dark void speckled with the white lights of stars and covered partially with woolen clouds. Aradia emerges from between the trees. Most of the leaves are already on the ground. You wave at her as her feet carry her swiftly down the hillside. For a moment, she almost looks alive.

“Well, how’s your day been?” you ask as soon as she’s close enough to speak to.

“Found a deer skull,” she says, producing one from the hem of her dress. You lean as far as you can to get a good look at the thing. It is, in fact, a deer skull. The antlers are huge and sharp.

“How’d you have that inside your dress?” you ask. Aradia smiles. 

“A girl has her secrets,” she says. The joy in her voice warms your ribcage. Why haven’t you been doing this every night?

You sit on the roof and chat for hours on end. The horizon is tinted pink when Strider clambers up the rope ladder. His hair is disheveled and he’s adjusting his shades as his head pokes up to investigate. Thick puffs of vapor come from his mouth. When he sighs in resignment, he practically creates a full cloud. You give Aradia a quick wave and follow him down.

…

Rose is back.

She steps into the hallway, pulling off a scarf soaked through from the rain outside. Strider moves back to let her in. She’s clad in a dark purple overcoat and her hair is dappled by drops of water from outside. She wrings out her scarf and tosses it to Strider. “Let’s get this ghost, shall we, gamers?”

Strider throws the scarf to the hallway table over his shoulder, laughing at a reference that’s lost on you. Rose pulls out a notepad and pen from her bag. “What exactly is your plan of attack here? Like, I’m all for having my home invaded by a goth girl when I could be doing literally anything else, obviously, but I do kinda want to know exactly how you’re planning on doing this.”

“Well, it’s clear I’m the only one who can see the ghost, so I’ve decided to try and have a… ah. A séance? By which I do mean an interview,” Rose explains. You look over your shoulder at Aradia, leaning against the window glass. She gives you a little thumbs up.

“An Interview With a Ghost?” Strider asks. Rose removes her jacket with a swift movement and hangs it up to dry. “The hit 1994 film starring Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise?”

“Exactly,” Rose says, and both of them chuckle. Again, the topic of conversation is completely lost on you, so you get up. The moment you make a move, Rose narrows her eyes in your general direction, her gaze followed shortly by Strider. “It’s on the stairs.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake- stop saying ‘it!’ Okay? I’m a person! Jesus, have a little respect!” you snap at her, grunting as you stand. Rose looks curious and almost amused.

“Uh… _he’s_ on the stairs?”

“Oh, the ghost is a ‘he’ now?” Strider asks, mocking. Rose disregards him. Strider rolls his eyes and absconds down the hallway and out of your sight. “I’ll get some snacks. Is Doritos okay?”

You open the attic door and step inside. You did say you’d humor her. You hear her respond off-handedly to Strider from the stairs. The stairs creak beneath her weight. “Doritos are fine, thank you.”

The moment the door clicks closed behind you, Rose is up in your business. Staring at you with wide, awed eyes and her notepad at the ready, she begins to talk before you even realize she’s there. You jump, stumbling backward and to the bed. She follows you, her face never more than five inches from yours, and she’s constantly talking. Your heart beats like it’s trying to make your head explode. You can’t register a word she’s saying. You hold up a hand and push her away.

“Back up, back up, back the fuck up away from me right now!” you yell. Thankfully, she pauses, letting you gather your breath. Your heartbeat is still pounding in your ears. “Listen, I promised Aradia that I would humor you, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not going you kick you right the fuck out if you make this miserable hell I live in even shittier. Also, I have a limited amount of willingness to put up with your nonsense, so tread the fuck lightly! Capiche?”

Rose blinks, surprised. Her hand moves almost on its own to scribble something on the notepad. She checks it like even she’s not sure what she wrote. When she looks back up, her eyes are fierce and determined. “Alright. I accept these conditions.”

“Oh, I meant them more as a threat, but if you fucking insist,” you mutter. She smiles coyly. “But in that case, one more condition: you will tell nothing of what I say here to Strider.”

“Strider?” she asks. “Do you mean-”

“You know exactly who I mean!” you snap. “That detestable pisshead in the stupid aviators has done nothing but make my afterlife worse ever since he got here. I’m not about to give him any information about me when he can’t even see me.”

Rose taps her chin with her pen. “Fine. I accept that. Let’s start simple, Mister Ghost-”

“Karkat. My name is Karkat.”

She gives you an accusatory, amused look before writing something down. “Well, there goes my first question. And what-”

“No, you little witch, it’s my fucking turn now,” you interrupt. “Here’s an interesting question that I’ve been wondering for some time now: how come you can see me?”

“My name is Rose, thank you for asking.” Rose shakes her head. Before you can interrupt and tell her you already know what her name is, she continues. “What makes you think I know that? I’ve always been fascinated with death, but I doubt that alone gives me the power to see the other side. Perhaps there’s some fundamental aspect of my personality which suits me better for ghost perception. It’s something I need to study more. Now, my turn again. How old are you?”

“That depends. Do you want my actual age or the amount of years I’ve existed?” you sass at her.

“Let’s begin with the former, shall we?”

You roll your eyes. “Would it kill you to talk like a normal person for just once in your life? I was seventeen when I died. And you?”

“Turning seventeen in a month,” Rose answers while taking notes. You watch her write. She does look about your age. And she looks annoyingly familiar. You look her up and down, racking your brain for something. Then it clicks.

“Hey, wait a minute! You’re one of the kids who came to my house that one time!” you say accusatorily. She blinks.

“You remember that?”

“Of course I remember! Do you know how much of a hassle it was to clean up when I finally got the three of you to leave me the fuck alone? Wait-” proverbial lightbulbs are going haywire all over your head- “John and Jade! EctoBiologist and gardenGnomestick or whatever the fuck it was? That was you! Of course! Isn’t it just my fucking life story that the universe conspires pull this kind of shit on me?”

“Yes. It was, in fact, the very John, Jade and I who visited this estate when we were young. Small world, truly. I’m shellshocked that we continue to live in the same town that we did at the time. Your knowledge of my friend group does concern me, though. It wouldn’t happen to be that you’ve been… spying on us, would it?” Your piercing glare grows harshes with every word that falls from her mouth. She smirks smugly, ever so slightly, as she looks up at you. “For the record, you look just as I remember you. Although, perhaps a bit more tangible? As I recall, you were little more than a humanoid golden sort of mist when I first saw you. You seem… well, _real_, now.”

“I’ve been real this whole time, asshole,” you growl as she reaches over to touch the loosely knitted fabric of your sweater and hums with curiosity, taking notes all the while. “It’s not my fault if you can’t see me.”

“It was not meant as an attack towards you,” Rose says, writing at the same time. She frowns at the paper and crosses something out. “I’m simply informing you of it. I thought you might find it fascinating, as I do, but I suppose I could be mistaken. For my next question-”

“Isn’t it my turn?” you say.

“No, you asked me how old I was. That technically qualifies as a question. No complaining! You insisted on doing this in the vein of ‘Twenty Questions’ rather than lightning round. This is the proverbial bed that you have made for yourself, and I will exploit it. Now. How did you end up as a ghost?”

“How did you end up being this annoying?” you snap. For a flash, there’s actually something like discomfort… sadness, fear, even, on Rose’s face before it returns to an indecipherable deadpan. Oh, goddamit, Vantas. When will you learn? You shake your head. If she feels shitty, that’s her problem. Right? “What I’m saying is I don’t see how this is literally any of your fucking business.”

“I’m curious,” Rose insists. Any trace of negative emotion you may have seen on her face is now long gone. “Besides, I have no doubt it could offer some very interesting insight into your rather memorable personality.”

“If you’re going to insult me, just do it to my face instead of this backhanded horseshit.” You mess with your hair. “I fell.”

“Oh, please don’t tell me it was down the stairs,” Rose almost pleads. “I don’t think I could handle the number of forced references that would have to be made if that were the case.”

“What? What the hell are you talking about?” you ask. “No! I fell through the window and broke my neck.”

“Oh, thank god,” Rose sighs, quickly scribbling something down. Without looking up, she points at the window with the end of the pen. “That window?”

“The same exact one! It’s almost like there’s a limited number of windows in this house that it would kill you to fall through- that number being fucking one!” You groan roughly. “I’d really like to know why you want all this information about me. If you want to know what it’s like to be a ghost, I can tell you and I can do it in two words: It sucks! Wow! There you go! You can leave now! If you’re just here to pry into my personal life, you can and in fact, I urge you to fuck right off!”

“Well, to answer your question,” Rose begins, tone unchanging, ignoring the loud sound of frustration you let out over her words. “I’ve always been rather fascinated by the afterlife. I suppose one could wax philosophical about what drives any given person towards certain aesthetics or interests, but I believe that to be a topic that’s too in-depth for us to try and cover in the limited amount of time we have. Do all dead people become ghosts?”

“No! Can you see any other fucking ghosts around here? They don’t! If there was even the slightest, tiniest sliver of a potential that all dead people became ghosts, this house would be absolutely overrun with every off-in-the-head infant who ever decided to stick a fork in a plug and every sickening, shitlicking junkie from Prospit’s repugnant streets, because that’s the kind of lowlife motherfuckers I seem to be beckoning with my presence!”

“I see. And why have you chosen to haunt this house in specific? Is it simply because it was your home in life?” she asks, no longer meeting your eyes as she’s focused on writing things down.

“I can’t fucking leave!” you yell. Rose looks up at you, eyebrows furrowed. “Okay? I’m stuck! I’m stuck and alone and I don’t have anywhere to go, because whatever unloving god exists out there has vengefully decided that this is a suitable punishment for my very existence, which I never asked for! Don’t you think I’d already have left if I could? Don’t you think I’d be somewhere far, far away by now, somewhere that didn’t suck this fucking much? Because I would gladly waltz out of here right this second and never ever look back on this shithole town ever again!”

There’s a moment of silence, Rose eyeing at you with an indecipherable expression. Then she nods. “I understand. Apologies if I broached a sore subject.”

“Keep your nasty bogus apologies. I don’t want to hear that shit.” You run a hand through your hair. You should wash it. You won’t, probably. “It’s my turn to ask.”

“Go for it,” Rose says almost condescendingly.

“Okay, uh…” you sigh. The two of you just stare at each other for several agonizingly awkward moments. You’re racking your brain for things that are important. Aradia… “Do they… still make VHS tapes?”

You and Rose speak for a long time. You tell her about what it’s like to be a ghost, about Aradia’s theories, about Aradia. She tells you about what life is like now. VHS tapes are obsolete now, she says, everyone uses something called Netflicks? Pretty much everyone has a computer, apparently- and that little slab Strider carries around is what phones look like now. You’re mystified. You should be taking notes the same way she is. Hours pass. Strider comes upstairs with a bag of Doritos at some point and eats them passively from the desk chair while he watches your animated - and to him, one-sided - conversation unfold.

“Thank you so much,” she says to you as she’s leaving.

“No problem,” you and Strider say at the same time. You give him an angry glare for stealing your line, but he just leans against the wall, slurping a Capri-Sun. He still can’t see you. Rose chuckles, gives an idle wave and leaves. You immediately feel more alone.

…

Every once a week or so, Strider gets new bruises on his arms and cuts on his face. You don’t know where they come from. He’s never at home when he gets them. Neither is Bro.

You’re sure it’s nothing. You hope it is.

…

Rose comes around once every few weeks. Many of those times, she and Strider’s other friends are with her. When they are, she gives you little more than a passing nod when she sees you. On those days, you try to stay away from the four of them. It’s started to hurt, knowing that they can’t see you. So close, yet so far away.

You spend time with Aradia, too. Usually you talk with her from the roof. Going downstairs still gives you the creeps with all those puppets. 

You’re still trying to stay on the down low with Bro, but you’ve taken to fucking up his things whenever you can. There was a point where if he was filming something, you would adjust things to make the recording get messed up. The thing that baffles you is sometimes when you do something in the video that by all accounts should ruin it completely, like knocking the “main” puppet from in front of the camera or activating some weird machine of his too early, he seems downright pleased by it. It’s like the actual quality of his filmography doesn’t matter to him.

As for Strider himself, he still ignores you for the most part. Sometimes he says things out loud when nobody else is around, things that he clearly meant for you to hear. Things like “did you move my cable” (yes, it was in the way) and “where the fuck are my selfies” (they were dry, so you put them in his folder). The worst part about this is the fact that he can’t hear your responses, so you’re forced to just scream at deaf ears. 

Sometimes he just raps to himself, especially in the middle of the night in his bed. Improvises whole verses of rhythmically strange poems, saying them aloud to himself, pausing and breaking and repeating. You’d be impressed, maybe even captivated, if it weren’t for how annoying it all was. Songs about sick fires and other moronic nonsense like that. He writes them down before he goes to bed, and the next day, he hunches over a microphone, mumbling into it. 

He’s still douchey as fuck, a fact which is extremely evident in the garbage music he listens to and his general demeanor.

One day, you’re sitting on his bed, staring at the ceiling. You get so tired sometimes and you don’t have any way to deal with it beyond trying to let things slip away. Strider is at his desk, one headphone on, humming uncertainly and tapping to some beat he made himself. You groan and mentally try to block it out. You can hear the music from here. Strider stops in his tracks and slides his headphones down around his neck.

“Hey, ghost dude. You here?” he asks, looking over his shoulder. His voice is kind of bored and frustrated. With a choleric sigh, you sit up. He seems to notice the movement in his sheets, because his face shifts ever so slightly. He takes his headphones off and holds them up. “Any chance you could listen to this beat? Something’s off with it and I can’t tell what it is. Not that I can hear you, but like, you can be my rubber ducky. Real bathtime hours up in this shit, get the sick beat all squeaky clean, y’know? This beat’s so ill it’s dirty and it’s our job to…”

“Oh, so now you give a shit that I exist,” you say loudly over his rambling, harshly grabbing the headphones from his hand. He seems surprised and his monologue is cut short by him jerking backwards at the force of your tug. He watches you put them on, mystified, and his hand idles over the spacebar. When it presses down, rhythmic beats explode in your ears. Synthesizers, snares and bass drums. A powerful 4/4 booms at the base, with strong kicks on the threes and between beats. It’s been a long while since you heard music like this. The melody is fast and biting. “Wow. Did you actually make this? Because I’m having a hard time believing that.”

Strider glances at the screen, and makes a face. He squints at the waveforms- on one channel, they go up and down quickly to the beat, but on another, they’re almost flat. “Hold on. Did you just talk?”

“What, the computer? It’s a machine. I don’t think it can talk. What are you looking at?” you snark to deaf ears. Strider’s jaw falls and he grabs the headphones back, clicking around on the screen rapidly with his other hand. You stumble back. “Hey! The fuck was that, you jaded fuckwit?”

Strider moves the microphone harshly on the table towards you. “Hey, real quick, could you lean in real close and talk into that for me? Talk about, like, your favorite movie or something, I don’t know.”

You furrow your brows, but lean in so close your lips almost touch the mic anyway. He presses ‘record.’ “Okay, go.”

“The fact that you assume I’m going to play along with whatever the fuck ridiculous science experiments you want me to partake in is kind of sick, honestly, I don’t know why I deal with you,” you say sharply. Strider’s eyes are glued to the screen, to the ever so slight undulating of the waveform on his screen. 

When you stop talking, he stops the recording and starts messing with the result, rambling to himself- or maybe to you. “Holy shit, okay, so some sort of vibration is what’s happening because Audition is picking it up. Some kinda frequency’s definitely there, and it’s not just idle noise, I know what idle noise looks like and this ain’t it, chief. This could be massive. I think if I could just get those frequencies up and really get that shit out of there then we might be able to get to something straight outta Ghostbusters. I’m gonna hacker voice I’m in this shit, it’s gonna be unreal. Rose is going to lose her mind. This might just finally net me that Nobel prize that I rightfully deserve. My name’s gonna go down in historyyyyyy.”

He draws out the ‘y’ in history, like he’s trying to come up with some way to continue his asinine rambling, but is running out of ideas in favor of focusing on whatever he’s doing. There’s a bunch of pop-ups with fuzzy dots on them, diagrams and graphs. He messes with settings, moves sliders up and down, inputs numbers and values. Screens open and close too fast for you to keep track of. Then he laughs triumphantly, earphones already on, and presses play. His face cycles through joy, shock, confusion and then back to joy. 

“I cannot believe that this shit actually worked,” he says, incredulous, pulling his headphones off haphazardly and offering them to you. Despite - or maybe because of - your growing confusion, you grab them and put them on. Strider’s fingers lightly touch the spacebar again, and then, a very fuzzy, wavering sound plays in your ears, distorted and distant, as if recorded through a wall or under a blanket.

_“The fact that you assume I’m going to play along with whatever the fuck ridiculous science experiments you want me to partake in is kind of sick, honestly, I don’t know why I deal with you.”_

...Holy shit.

Is that what your voice sounds like?

…

On Halloween night - you assume it must be - Bro gives dick-shaped candies to the little kids who come to trick-or-treat. There’s a lot of them. You think maybe they’re attracted to this house because of the rumors that you’re here. Maybe they’re just really good dick candies. Strider doesn’t come home until the next night.

…

Strider starts to treat you with a little more respect after he realizes you actually exist. Not a lot more respect, let’s be clear, but some more. Really, it’s fair. Everything he knows about you is cursing, insults, anger. Even back when he figured out he could hear your voice by recording it, he seemed to be more proud of himself for figuring something out than anything else. When Rose comes around, Strider leaves the house until Rose messages him that she’s going to go home.

Really, it’s ideal to you. You both know the other exists, but you’re cool about it. No need to interact. It’s perfect.

...You still clean up after him. And he gets the bed. So, really, nothing has changed.

Sometimes he does acknowledge you. If his room is a mess and he comes home to find it cleaned up, he sometimes mutters a thank you that you can only assume is meant for you to hear. Other times, when Bro isn’t at home, Strider “accidentally” leaves the TV on in the middle of the night. The volume is off, but the subtitles are on. You don’t understand why he does it.

“Why is the television playing,” Aradia says from the window on one of those nights, leaning against the barrier that separates you from her. You sit on the couch, arms wrapped loosely around your knees. Some douchebag is reviewing an actor you’ve never seen. The colors are so bright and stark. It looks so much more real than TV did when you were alive.

“I think Strider left it out for me. For us,” you tell her. When she frowns, uncertain, you assure her, “he’s done this before. I think he feels bad about fucking my life up, so he’s paying it back like this.”

“Well, whatever this is meant to be, it looks boring,” Aradia sighs. You chuckle. The jokes on the show don’t really land without the audio to go along. You don’t want to disturb his sleep by turning the volume up.

“Yeah. Hold on,” you say, grabbing the remote and cycling through the channels. Oh, a weird, creepy crime show. That’s perfect. It’s just reruns of the same crime shit for hours and hours. You watch it together until the sun comes up. When Strider comes downstairs, yawning and stretching, and he looks up at you, his face twists ever so slightly in confusion and curiosity.

Maybe he’s not so terrible. Pretty bad, but… not irredeemable.

…

Sometimes it feels like he can kind of see you. Or at least sense you, somehow. When you come in through the wood of the door and he looks over, examining the air around you, but ultimately looking back down to the screen of his computer. It’s strange. You’re probably just imagining it though.

…

One day, it’s raining out. You stand in front of the desk, staring out. The clouds are a dark slate gray, obscured partially by the raindrops speckled all over the glass. All the lights are off. You’ve been getting the sense that Strider has something of a fear of the dark. He never leaves the lights off, even when he leaves the house, as though he’s afraid that something unspeakable is going to manifest in the corners when he’s not there to keep watch.

He’s laying on the bed on his back, a pillow between the wall and the back of his head. Why not just use the desk, when he has a perfectly serviceable one? You will never understand modern people. You turn around to look at him, covered in salt & vinegar chip crumbs. He’s tapping idly at the keyboard. He looks bored, and sighs to himself in resignation.

“Can’t believe I have to resort to this.” Then, he looks up at you in turn. “Ghost bro. You here?”

You pick up a crumpled up piece of paper from the desk and throw it at him. Strider catches it with ease and scoffs.

“You wanna play Mortal Kombat? John’s busy, but this essay ain’t fuckin’ cooperating and I’m bored down to my balls.”

Mortal Combat?

“If you do, grab the other controller. It’s on the desk.” You know where he keeps the controllers. Motherfucker thinks you don’t even live here. Without looking away from his douchebag shades, you grab the controller and throw it at him. Again, he catches it from midair without even flinching. “Okay, dude, chill. Don’t break my shit. These things cost more than liquid gold. And that shit is hot, so you know they’re steamin’. Like, I know you’re a ghost and all, but you don’t have to haunt this shit, y’know? You can be like, a cool ghost, like Casper. Oh, shiiiit, is your name Casper? That’d be so rad if it was. I mean, not that you’ve been particularly friendly, but-” 

“My name is not Casper, holy shit! Not all ghosts are fucking named Casper,” you try to protest, but he keeps monologuing. You roll your eyes with a beleaguered groan. He can’t see you, but he can definitely feel the shift of the bed under your weight as you march over and sit down. Strider does a little smug half-smile to himself and plugs the thing in on your behalf.

“Alright, so, you ever play Mortal Kombat before?” 

“Of course not, you blistering pimple of a human.” 

“Alright, well, I don’t know what you just said, but I’m gonna assume you haven’t.”

He shows you the controls. This is so different from what you’re used to. After a long while of explaining combos and specials and fatalities, you start to play. The game is gruesome as hell. You can already tell that Aradia would love this. You smash the buttons desperately for half an hour as Strider beats your ass into the dirt over and over.

“Dude, you’re worse than John,” Strider laughs after fifteen or so lost matches. You yell and throw the controller into his lap, twisting on the bed so you’re not looking at him. He can’t see you sulk, but that doesn’t mean you’re not going to do it anyway. For a few moments, there’s silence and shuffling behind you. You hear Strider’s voice. “Uh, hey. Here.”

You look over your shoulder to find him offering his headphones to you.

“I know you’re like, a total shithead, but it feels like basic decency to show this to you? Or audio-show. Whatever the sound form of showing something is? Back when I recorded your voice, I realized it actually sounded kinda cool, so I tried to make a little mix out of it,” he rambles on as you take the headphones from his hands and put them on. The game on the screen has been replaced with the same audio waveform thing that he used to record you a few weeks ago. He presses down the spacebar.

Music bursts in your ears. Synthesized chords and a harsh bassline and drums, and lyrics that sound fuzzy and distant- and then you realize what they’re saying.

_“...play along, play, play, fuck, play, play along, science experime- fuck- experiments- play along- fuck, fuck, science experiments, kind of sick, want, fuck, fuck, honestly, don’t know why I deal with you-”_

It… actually sounds kind of amazing. After a little bit, your foot is tapping and your head is nodding to the beat. It’s catchy. You can’t help yourself. The lyrics loop in a ten or so second pattern over varying chords and bassline melodies, sometimes edited slightly to be higher or lower pitch. You didn’t know it was possible to change the pitch of sounds like that.

You lose yourself in the music, closing your eyes. You never thought that you, your voice, could actually sound like this. Especially this recording- the way your voice cracks ever so slightly on every “fuck” grinds against your ears like sandpaper, but the melody is so captivating. You feel like you should hate this, and yet it’s… been so long since you heard music like this. Since you listened to music like this.

When the song ends, you scoff and tear the headphones off. “Was that it? It just faded out? Fading out is the weakest way to end the song. Ruined the whole experience, you really should never even try to make music again-”

You look up and find him staring right at you, mouth agape. Your words die in your throat. You can see his eyes faintly behind the lenses of his shades, staring at you, wide. His face isn’t even a foot away from yours. Again, you get that sensation of being pierced through, vulnerable, visible. The feeling of being seen.


	6. Eighth Wonder of the World

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HOOH long time no see huh
> 
> uh again i'm gonna thank everyone for all y'alls supportive feedback and stuff i've gotten since i posted the last chapter y'all have been making my every day djkfsjdfshf it's actually super wild to think that people are actually reading this au bc i love writing it!!! i'm really glad it's bein enjoyed
> 
> other than that, i think now would be kind of a good time to make a lil disclaimer? you may have noticed that there are occasionally like. odd words or turns of phrase that don't really make sense in the text, and the reason that those are there is - and this may surprise you - english is not actually my native language. so sometimes i miss those little odd idioms or words that don't make sense in editing and since i don't have a beta reader or anything they end up in the final text so. that's why those are there hope y'all don't mind too much!!!
> 
> also i went back and changed the name of chapter 2 because i didn't like the old name
> 
> ANYWAY i really wanted to get this chapter out there finally and i really hope you guys have as much fun reading it as i do writing this fic!!!!!! happy 11/11!! i really thought i wouldn't end up actually posting this chapter on 11/11 but i guess life just is like that sometimes

“Uh, hey,” Strider says, dumbfounded. His expression is full of shock and awe, maybe even fear. A complicated flurry of emotions is rushing in your head, and it feels overwhelming. “You are… shorter than I expected.”

“The fuck did you just say?” The words fall out of your mouth before you can even register them in your head. “I’ve been watching your gross teen nonsense for weeks, keeping your room clean and doing your laundry and practically been an unpaid worker because one of us doesn’t want to live in a pigsty, and this is what you greet me with? The nerve of you people!”

“‘Watching my gross teen nonsense’,” Strider says, voice pitched an octave higher than usual. He shakes his head and looks away. “That’s it. I can never jack off again in this lifetime, no way, no how. I’m going celibate, swear on my mama’s maiden name right the fuck this second-”

“Oh, what? Ew! Eugh, gross, no- That’s not what I fucking meant, oh my god-” you choke on your words.

“-some sort of weird afterlife voyuerism kink, getting your rocks off from being invisible, like, ectoplasming all over the house-”

“-I can’t believe you would slander my good name like this when I’ve done nothing but bless you with my presence for all the agonizing days you’ve spent sleeping like a fetid corpse in my formerly so proper bed-”

“You are so fuckin’ unintimidating, holy shit,” Strider laughs breathlessly. “What are you, like, 5’2”? I thought I was supposed to be scared of you or some shit, but you look like you came here straight from Build-A-Bear with those like big button eyes of yours- are you a Beanie Baby? Like a really vintage Beanie Baby auctioned for like seven hundred bucks?”

“5’4”!” You yell, and instantly realize how much you’re proving his point. “I am not a Beanie Baby! I’m a terrifying undead spirit and I could make your life hell if I wanted to, mark my fucking words! And really, I should! You come to my house, my place of residence, and fuck the whole place up just by existing!”

Strider heaves a really heavy breath that kinda just sounds like a forced wheeze. “Holy shit. I’m being haunted by a toddler grandpa. Literal get off my lawn shit, but from the mouth of an actual infant-sized- holy fuck-”

“Toddler grandpa? I swear to god I’m going to-” You’re interrupted by a loud laugh from Strider. A bundle of emotions bursts in your chest, hot and fluttering. Embarrassment, that’s what it is, it must be. You frown, mouth twisting almost uncomfortably. Your shoulders are tensed in a way that makes the pain in your neck rise to a sharp spike. 

“Dude, you think I can’t tell you’re talking purely and 100% out of your ass?” he says breathlessly, adjusting his shades. Shit, he absolutely just called your bluff. “You’re harmless.”

“Fuck you,” you snap. Strider is little more than amused.

“Okay. Okay. Whatever. So are you just going to like… chill here now?” he asks, twisting his body and leaning back against the wall so that the two of you are directly face to face. “Like, in my room? Are you gonna vanish again?”

“What? No. I mean, I didn’t exactly choose to vanish the first time around, and I didn’t exactly choose to un-vanish just now, either,” you tell him. “You think I would be here if I had options? You’re wrong.”

“Wow, harsh,” he says, running a hand through his hair. There’s a faint pale scar on the back of it. “So you’re just gonna hang out here? Fuck. I really don’t need a roommate.”

“I didn’t need one either, but I didn’t get much of a fucking choice in the matter, did I?” you snark. You can’t see his eyes from this angle, but the way his head moves seems to indicate he just rolled them, so you scoff and groan. “Oh, grow up.”

“Fine,” he sighs. “Let’s start with this: do you have a name or will ‘ghosty asshole’ suffice?”

“Oh great, we’re doing some sort of weird show and tell thing now? Fuckdammit. Let’s just get it over with. I’m Karkat,” you say.

Strider nods with passive acknowledgement. “Cool, cool. I’m Dave.”

“Yeah, super cool! Now that the pleasantries are over with, we can go back to ignoring each other and- Wait. Did you say ‘Dave’?” you ask. He frowns and nods. It takes you a few moments to register. “Oh. Ah, wow. I just realized that… I didn’t actually know your name.”

Strider just stares blankly for about ten seconds. “Uh. Guess that makes two of us?”

A beat passes in silence.

“I mean I didn’t know your name before now. I did know my name, which is Dave, and has been for several years now, in fact it has been my name so long that I have not have any names besides it, but I've been here like, what, a full month now, and you didn't know yet? Holy shit, how is it possible for you to not have figured it out yet, have you been mentally blocking it out or something or are you just completely deaf in both ears-”

“Stop!” you say, bringing a hand to his mouth to muffle his voice. “Just. Stop talking! You are a thoroughly embarrassing person to be around, did you know that? I’m actually fucking impressed with just how much complete and total bullcrap you can formulate with that moronic foodhole of yours as soon as you get even the hint of an opportunity to run it! We’re not on a gameshow, maybe you should-”

He grabs your hand and removes it from your mouth. “Oh, like you’re so much better about rambling-”

“No, shut up! My words carry actual meaning and are meant to communicate information, whereas yours are just dumb fucking fluff-” you say, trying to wrestle your hand from his grip. You’re both talking loudly to the point where you can’t really tell what either of you are saying, and you’re kicking and tugging to free yourself from him. All you can register mentally is that he’s being dumb. Somehow your head has ended up in a noogie under his arm and your legs are tangled up with the blanket snaking between them. “Strider, let go of me! Fuck! Agh-”

“No way, Jose, we’re in it now and we’re gonna see this through. This is our Titanic, it’s going down and the boats are all full already, so we’re gonna go down in the flames and- fuck, shit-” Strider keeps rambling while you twist yourself in a way that makes your neck ache, forcing him to either curl up or shift in another way, and you end up on the bed struggling to breathe with your head in the blanket. 

“Get off of me!” you shriek and yell, flailing your arms around wildly. Strider’s still got a deathgrip on your arm and torso, and somehow you manage to fling the both of you off the bed and onto the hard wooden floor. For some five or so seconds your face is separated from the planks only by the thick fabric of the blanket. You’re in complete darkness, wriggling furiously for freedom. Then you remember that you're a ghost, so you just fade through the blanket.

Or try to. Strider's arm is still around your waist and is keeping you in place. You find yourself unable to go free, so you try to squirm out of his grip and make some very frustrated and high-pitched sounds. He’s clearly sitting up, from how his arm is positioned. Strider makes an effortful noise and releases it with a breathy chuckle. “Okay, hold on, hold still.”

The floor is no longer beneath you. Actually, you don’t know where the floor is. You just hear a faint ‘hup’ from Strider and a few seconds later, you find yourself on your ass, your head positioned uncomfortably against the edge of the bed. The blanket is wrapped around your head, but Strider strips it off, releasing you from your textile tomb. You make sure to scowl especially nastily at his douchebag shades when they come into view. His expression is unreadable.

“Feel better now?”

…

“So you’re really a ghost? Dead and buried and all that?” Strider asks, sitting on his desk chair, toying with a pencil. There’s a quirk to his mouth that lets you know he’s skeptical of what you’ve told him. “The real deal, hundred percent poltergeist?”

“I already explained this to Rose, I’m not going to recount the whole fucking thing to you, too,” you tell him, annoyed. “Yes, I died. Yes, I died in this house. Yes, I can walk through walls, no, I can’t levitate or any of that other shit. That’s all you’re getting.”

“How’d you die?” he asks, long and slender fingers still fiddling with that fucking pencil. “Cancer? Allergic reaction? Fell down the stairs? Choked on some hot dude’s dick?”

“I’m- what? What the fuck is with you people and falling down stairs? No! I fell through the window. Snapped my neck when I hit the ground,” you say, getting angrier every word. He stops his hands, instead furrowing his brows and giving an uncertain look.

“Why’d you do that?”

“It wasn’t intentional, obviously, shit-for-brains,” you say. “I was pushed.”

“Hold up, you got murdered?” Strider says incredulously, leaning towards you over the back of the desk chair. “Holy shit, straight up killed in cold blood? For real? That’s so fucking fake, no way is that true. You’re bullshitting me to make yourself look cooler because the reality is that you like stepped on a fuckin’ Lego or something and tripped and fell-”

“I could not give a single godforsaken shit whether or not you think I’m cool, you self-obsessed fuckwit! Not everything is about looking cool like you and your brother always think! I was pushed out of a window, and I happen to hate the man who did it with my entire heart. In fact, I can prove that I broke my neck! Look!” You don’t like to fuck with your neck intentionally. It still hurts a lot. But spite is a powerful thing.

You turn your head sharply, so that your head is facing away from Strider at an angle there’s no way a living person could replicate. There’s a noise not unlike the popping sound that your back makes sometimes when standing up after spending a long time lying down. You grimace as pain rushes hotly up your spine. Strider goes quiet for a few moments. Then he releases a long, shuddery breath. “Eugh.”

“Eugh, indeed, dickweed,” You snap your head back into place and try to get the sudden feeling of dizziness you got from that to go away. “Hope you enjoyed that, you sick fuck. Not exactly comfortable for me, either.”

Strider’s face is full of something like awed disgust. He rubs his temple with two fingers. “Jesus. Man, I… fuck. I’m sorry.”

“Uh… yeah,” you say, rolling your shoulders. It’s a little bit offputting that he backed down so quickly. How are you supposed to think he’s an asshole if he genuinely apologizes for something? You look down at the floor. It’s not going to be any fun to yell at him now, so what are you to say?

“How long have you been here?” Strider asks eventually, after a few moments that felt like centuries have passed. You meet his eyes as best you can with the dark lenses in the way. He looks a little bit umcomfortable, hands twisting and fiddling idly. “I mean… you must’ve been pretty fuckin’ lonely, like all kinds of one man party out here, right? Not that I know what you’ve been up to, but the place looked pretty run down when we got here. I really didn’t think anyone would live in a shithole like this. Well, I guess more like… after… afterlive? I don’t know if that’s a word or not but I guess people haven’t really believed in ghosts thus far so maybe we should coin it and add it to Merriam-Webster and all that shit. Or Urban Dictionary, you know that’s where the real validation’s at.”

If you didn’t interrupt him, you have the feeling he’d continue talking forever. “Okay, shut the fuck up.”

Miraculously, he does, and looks up at you, lip quirked downward.

"...A long time. Years, probably. I’ve lost track, so I don’t actually know,” you say, crossing your arms. “I’ve been stuck in this house for god knows how long with no reliable way of keeping up the date while the whole building has been falling apart beneath me despite my repeated attempts to keep it in order! And, you know, now there’s swords and porn puppets everywhere, so that’s fun too.”

“Hey, don’t insult Bro’s smuppets,” Strider says immediately. He glances at the door, like he’s afraid someone’s eavesdropping on you, but then he seems to remember that while he can see and hear you, you’re probably still invisible to the world outside this room. His shoulders slump and his voice gets quiet, although he regains some confidence and grows steadily more Strider-y as he speaks. “I get that. Well, I get the whole angsty ghost shtick, but let’s be clear, you don’t have my sympathy on this. I mean, no offense, but your house was a massive dump before we moved in and it kind of still is.”

“You made it worse!” you snap. “You have not fixed anything! Except the rats. You have reduced the number of rats significantly, and I do have to give credit where credit is due, but the amount of absolute bullshit you’ve layered thickly over every single other aspect of life in this house vastly outweighs what you’ve done with the rat situation!”

“Nah nah, your crib was not funky fresh before we got here. What we’ve done is coolify it. It’s above your coolness range, I’m sorry to tell you this, but the tests are in and the results for your coolness are, in fact, negative. We’re so sorry to tell you the news, but you will never have a baby of your own,” he explains. You gesture wildly and incredulously, and he laughs. “I could keep going-”

“Please, for the love of god, do not,” you interrupt him then and there, rubbing the bridge of your nose. Blessed silence settles for all of three seconds. Then Strider breathes in.

“Honestly, I-”

“Stop!” you yell.

“I’m really impressed you haven’t gone like, completely stir crazy,” Strider says, in direct defiance of what were extremely simple instructions, in your honest opinion. “Like, solitary confinement sucks, we know that. There’s been science done on it, hot studies and shit dropped right on conservative ass by the just hand of science or whatever. Shouldn’t you have gone like, totally nuts by now?”

“I had books,” you say. “I… read a lot of books. And reread.”

“Oh, yeah, those trashy romance novels that I found a whole bag of on my bed one day? That was you, yeah? Jesus fuck, you have terrible taste,” Strider says. He leans his shoulder on the back of the chair.

“They are not trashy, they’re art!” you complain, and he clearly finds something about that very funny, because he actually laughs.

“Okay, otaku boy. They’re hot garbage, Karkles, sorry to break it to you.”

“I’ll be breaking your bones in a second if you call me Karkles again even once throughout in your miserable existence, I swear,” you say.

“Sure, Karkles,” he says, laughter in his voice, and laughs as you launch into another extremely tiring shitfit. What is that, the seventh one today? He really knows how to push your buttons.

…

Thick gray clouds of cotton obscure most of the sky outside, dark and glossy with stars. The house is almost silent, but the wind whistles softly as it forces its way through the walls. The Striders should really renovate the house. Actually, no. Knowing them, they’d just turn it into some sort of hell dimension of puppet sex and fake irony. You lean against the desk and cold beams of moonlight from between the clouds flow in and through you. It’s kind of a surreal experience to literally see light pass through your own body.

Strider groans in the bed behind your back. You look at him over your shoulder, finding him frowning at you. His voice is coarse and sleep-addled, but he’s clearly trying to stay quiet. “Could you leave? I can’t fucking sleep.”

“What? Why?” you ask, annoyed.

“It’s just… you’re like, in my room. It feels like you’re watchin’ me and judgin’ me or some shit, it’s weird as hell, dude, come on. Give a man some privacy,” he mutters, fingers of one hand grasped gently around his pillowcase. His shoulders are tucked up to his ears, and he’s covered chin to toe in two blankets. He’s wearing a long-sleeved shirt to bed, and you’ve always worn a lot of thick clothes, you admit, but he’s wearing it to bed. Sometimes it’s just incredibly obvious how Texan this guy is.

“What, you want me to go hang out with Mr. and Mr. Sexdoll downstairs while they have their fun on the windowsill? Please,” you growl at him. “What the fuck is your deal anyway? You can’t relax for a second if someone is in the same room as you, you hide swords everywhere, you sleep in a pair of sunglasses- seriously, I’ve lived with you for a month and I don’t think I’ve ever seen you take those things off.”

Strider groans and turns on his side. “Shut the fuck up, wouldcha?”

Silence settles again. You turn back around to glare out of the window and ruminate on the conversation. After a while, you think he may have fallen asleep, but then you hear him shift again and make a sound so frustrated that there’s no way anybody could make it in their sleep. You decide to speak up, whether out of pity or sheer annoyance. “What I do when it really bothers me… I go to the roof.”

“Huh?” Strider asks.

“I said, jackass, that when it really bothers me that I can’t sleep, I go to the roof of the fucking house!” you say, louder, turning the chair around. Strider looks at you for a moment, then sighs.

“Fine. Let’s try it.”

It’s cold as fuck on the roof. Strider’s wrapped in a blanket with the other one under his ass to protect it from the cold tiling. His breath comes out in thick puffs of vapor. The sky is still clouded almost completely. The air is freezing. You don’t think you really breathe anymore, not any more than flower or a fruit might - you can still sigh and gasp, but you’re not really breathing. Still, even though it can’t fill your lungs, the frigid air permeates your body to the eternally fractured bone.

“So who murdered you?” Strider asks. “If you don’t mind me askin’ while we’re here in this candid feelings jam moment and all.”

You hesitate. “...My uncle did. Drunk out of his mind and out for blood. He was kind of a fucked up guy since day one, so I guess it was bound to happen eventually, as totally screwed in the head as that makes me sound.”

“Your uncle?” Strider says, nervous. “Like, an actual uncle of yours? Same genepool, one of your parents’ bro, straight up side dad?”

“Wh- yes, my actual uncle. I wasn’t, like, adopted or anything dumb as shit like that,” you say harshly. “What, is living with your real, biological family not a thing modern people do anymore? Are you not related to Bro?”

“Well, I mean, no, I am, all I mean’s…” Strider stops to consider his words. “Sometimes people call their family weird names that aren’t actually what they are, y’know? Like Bro’s not my actual brother, so I was just, y’know, curious.”

“Oh.” You consider for a moment. “So what is Bro to you?”

“Well, he’s my dad, I guess,” Strider says, and something about this idea clearly seems off to him to say out loud. “Feels weird to think of him that way, though.”

“Why do you call him ‘Bro’ then?”

“I honestly don’t know, dude. I was kind of, I don’t know if you’ve heard of this concept but a ‘baby’ when he decided on that shit?” Strider says, putting dramatic air quotes around the word ‘baby.’ “I guess ‘Dad’ wasn’t cool enough for him. Not that dads aren’t generally cool as hell. Like, flippin’ burgers on the grill, wearing cheesy aprons, telling completely shitty puns? Iconic, man. Absolutely iconic.”

You hum neutrally. You never really thought about dads as a concept. Of course, you had those nights when you were alive when you’d cry yourself to sleep thinking about what you’d never have. Then again, you also hate thinking of those nights. Oh, Vantas, how pathetic you’ve always been. The clouds drift idly across the sky, moved by an icy wind that brushes strands of hair onto your forehead.

“So did nobody notice?” Strider asks at some point, out of the blue. You raise your eyebrows at him, and he opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again. “When you died. Nobody noticed that you disappeared? Like… did your uncle get arrested?”

“Oh, no, I don’t think so,” you say. “I didn’t have any friends, so I don’t think anybody gave a shit. They probably all thought I’d finally offed myself or something.”

“What about your parents?” Strider asks. You frown and look away from him, at the lights of the mall across town, still painfully aware of the dark lenses of his shades tilted towards you.

“Never met them. They died when I was a baby.”

“Oh.” Strider looks away. “Harry Potter ass, huh. Fuck, I mean, I- ...That sucks.”

“Yeah, wow, it sure does! Gosh, I can’t believe I didn’t notice that myself before you pointed it out!” you say. Strider scoffs.

“That… actually makes sense, though. I don’t know where Bro found this hellhole exactly, but I think he probably dug it like, off Craigslist, cheap deal or some shit. So… your old man’s probably dead by now. I mean, assuming he was like in his 30s or 40s when you died, he would be dead by now anyway, probably? Well, it’s at least pretty viable, so, yeah.”

“That’s… good to hear, I guess,” you say, sighing. The thought of your uncle, dead and buried, finally in his Christian Hell, where he belongs… it’s actually kind of comforting on a genuine level. 

“They ever find your body?” Strider asks. You laugh, hollow.

“Doubt it. I think he buried it somewhere on the hillside. I never got a proper funeral,” you sigh, trying not to sound too sad and racking your brain for a change of topic. The idea of thinking about your own body is uncomfortable, to say the least. You’d rather not consider your own mortality. You clear your throat. “I’m curious. What the fuck would compel you to move here? Because it is a hellhole, you’re right on that.”

Strider huffs a breathy laugh, and white smoke explodes from his mouth as he does. His smile fades quickly as he begins to speak, though. “Kind of a long story. Short of it is, grew up in Texas where the corn grows tall and the vibe is real, had a mom that was kind of a drughead alcoholic, she and Bro didn’t get along so they broke the fuck up, and I got dragged with Bro to the least livable house in the coldest, deadest helltown that Ohio had to offer, ‘cos I guess child protective services decided that Mom wasn’t good enough.”

This doesn’t look like a topic he likes discussing. In fact, even with his shades on, he kind of looks like he’s about to burst into tears. His phone buzzes, so obviously grateful for the distraction, he pulls it out. You watch him. “What is it?”

“Just ticked over midnight’s all,” Strider sighs, tucking the phone away again.

“Oh,” you say softly. And then, “What day is it?”

“November 11th, 2018,” Strider says, as though it’s the most natural thing in the world.

“Oh.”

That sinks in for some ten or so seconds. Then it hits.

“Wait, are you serious?” you ask. He meets your eyes as much as he can with those stupid shades on, eyebrows furrowed, and nods. Something dark swells in the pit of your stomach. You think back through all the years, the empty days, the starless nights, the way the floorboards creaked more and more every passing moment and the way that the world outside the windows always felt so distant and fake. You think back and back and back, back to the day you died, and it feels like you’ve wasted… a lot of time. You’re not sure your legs could carry you if you were standing. Your eyes are damp, and your voice wavers more than you’d like to admit. “I’ve been here for thirty years.”

“Thirty years?” he asks, voice barely a whisper, but it’s still too loud.

You nod. “Down to the day.”

“Oh,” he says, quiet. Blood rushes through your ears.

His words don’t register even two hours later when he announces in a typically verbose manner that he’s tired, gives you a passive goodnight and heads back down to bed.

…

In the morning, you see Strider scramble up when his alarm rings. He barely got a few hours of shuteye, and looks almost embarrassed when he looks up at you, adjusting his shades to hide the obvious dark bags under his eyes. Other than the fact that he knows you’re there, nothing seems to have changed. He leaves, Bro leaves, and you’re left alone for the day again.

Almost alone.

“Remember how I told you about that living girl, Rose, and how she can see me?” you tell Aradia through the window. She’s sitting in the yellowed grass, hands around her knees. Sometimes she looks so small and cold. You wish you could give her a jacket or a pair of shoes or something. She nods, fingers curling into overgrown blades of grass and fiddling with brown leaves, not looking at you. You sigh. “Well, Strider can see me too.”

Aradia stops and looks up. “Really? Since when?”

“Since yesterday,” you explain.

“How?” she asks, head tilted in that six-year-old way that makes you feel like shit for not knowing how to answer her neverending questions. She seems genuinely surprised, which isn’t an emotion you often see in her. Not that she seems to know everything, far from it, but she often just seems to be too apathetic to care which way things turn out.

“I- I don’t know! You think I understand this shit any better than you do?” you say exasperatedly, gesturing with your hands. As you speak, Aradia stands up and walks over to you. “We were just… I don’t know, hanging out? And I listened to that stupid song of his that he made from my voice and then he suddenly just… saw me.”

She meets your eyes with her blank, white ones and hums thoughtfully. “That is… fascinating.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s a word for it,” you scoff. "Any ideas for how this piece of information fits into your ghost puzzle yet? I haven't spoken to Rose about it yet, but she might have some ideas, too."

"I don't know," Aradia says, clearly racking her brain. Her eyebrows furrowed, she traces the windowframe with a tiny hand. "I've never seen anything quite like this. I don't think I've ever encountered any living people that can see us, or any of us that can be seen by the living. I always assumed that there was just… no way to cross over between our worlds. I… It's upsetting, Karkat. I don't understand and I'm scared."

By the time she finishes, her voice has fizzled out into a hush. You place a hand on the barrier and try to meet her eyes. "Hey. We're going to be okay. Strider, as much of an asshole as he is, doesn't want anything bad for us, remember? We're in this together."

Aradia hesitates, but ultimately places her hand against yours on the plane that separates you. She smiles a little bit. "Yes. You're right. Thank you, Karkat."

"Hey, ghosts have to stick together," you say amicably. "Now. You got any cool dead shit to show me or what?"

Aradia is excited to present to you a whole hedgehog skeleton she found. It’s gruesome and kind of terrifying, but the glee she clearly has when she gets to tell you about it means that you couldn't give fewer shits.

…

A few days later, Bro stays at home to receive some dude in a mechanic’s outfit, who goes on to fuck around in the bathroom for a while. The whole building is filled with clanking. You sit in the attic for the hours until it dies out. Either it’s some completely normal and mundane plumber, or there’s a porno getting filmed in your bathroom right now.

Strider comes home, dumping his backpack on the bed next to you. He’s clearly pleased about something. Your presence startles him, but it doesn’t sour his mood for long, as he makes an excited hand gesture. “Shower’s finally fixed, baby!”

“Where the hell have you been showering thus far?” you ask, arms wrapped loosely around your knees.

“School gym changing rooms!” he says, and leaves down the stairs. The sound of rushing water coming from the bathroom is oddly calming, while at the same time activating a profound anxiety that the whole building is about to collapse under its own weight and the weight of the water pumping through the pipes.

…

Living with someone that can see you for the first time in thirty years is kind of weird. Strider treats you with a different sort of respect now. You’re almost a roommate of his. And now he can’t ignore it when you yell at him to do his laundry or remind him that he hasn’t eaten since he got home. He rolls his eyes. “Do I have to? I’m doing schoolwork-”

“Bullshit! You’re playing that stupid game with the silly-looking dragon again, I can see it! I’m not blind, Strider!” you yell, standing over his shoulder. He smacks at you blindly and you let his hand pass through your torso.

…

“So, do you have a theory yet?” you ask Rose. Strider is on the bed, taking up the entire thing, holding a bottle of apple juice. You didn’t know apple juice came in plastic bottles, but you suppose that’s just what life is like nowadays. He’s started to insert himself into you and Rose’s “seancés” ever since he started to see you. Rose is sitting in the desk chair, leaning back with a notepad in her hand like the most cliché psychiatrist you’ve ever seen. Her thick, black eyeliner, perfectly maintained dark lipstick and pale hair, and clean-pressed sweater vest don’t exactly help that impression either. You’re sitting on the floor cross-legged, back against the wall.

Rose hums, tapping her ballpoint pen against the paper a few times. “I’ve played around with some hypotheses, but I’m yet to come to a conclusion that makes sense from every perspective. At first, I believed it was simply a trait of mine that I could see ghosts, but now Dave has disproven that it’s simply a quirk of mine, and by - for a lack of a better word - _learning_ to see you, he has also disproven the idea that seeing ghosts is an inherently innate ability in general. It can’t be based entirely on believing in your existence, either, since Dave knew and accepted your existence before he was able to see you and then a seemingly random event triggered you being visible to him. But the sample size is simply too small. With only one ghost and only two people to see him, it’s impossible to know exactly what’s going on.”

You and Strider speak up at the exact same time, your voices overlapping.

“What if we brought in more people?”

“What if we brought in another ghost?”

You stare at each other for a long, long moment. Then Rose smiles. “Excellent suggestions, boys. Let’s make it happen, shall we?”

…

“Is Becquerel’s presence really necessary?” Rose asks with a beleaguered sigh as Jade hauls her huge, white dog in through the door. The white shepherd’s tail is wagging like nobody’s business, whacking the door frame with a loud noise every time as he clambers into the house. His thick white coat is completely soaked, stringy and patched with mud from the pouring rain outside. This absolute monster of a dog is straining at his harness, barking his teeth off and slobbering all over Strider’s face where he’s knocked the poor guy over onto the hallway floor. That shirt’s definitely going in the wash.

“Of course it is! Bec is the best dog, I couldn’t just leave him out of this!” Jade says excitedly. While her muscular build tells you she probably would have no trouble keeping Becquerel out of everyone’s business, she’s making no effort to save Strider from his bright pink tongue. Strider, meanwhile, is busy trying to wiggle out of the dog’s reach and holding his shades in place.

"Dave, are you alright?" John asks, though his tone is amused, removing a sky blue scarf from around his neck. His acne seems to be getting a little bit better.

"Oh, I'm just fucking peachy! Why would you think- heugh- anything else?" Strider heaves, still struggling but held in place by Bec's insistence on cleaning every inch of his face with a huge, rough dog tongue. "Call me some French asshole's orchard, that's how many peaches I've got up my ass right now!"

"Bec, here, boy!" Jade finally calls, pulling a treat out of her pocket. Becquerel instantly lets Strider free and bounces back to his owner, standing on his hind legs to place his paws on her shoulders as Jade tosses the treat in the air and Bec catches it in his mouth. Impressive, but it doesn't distract you from the amount of mud the dog has dragged in and spread all over your floor. They better clean that shit up or you'll be giving Rose and Strider some strongly worded feedback.

Strider sits up, rubbing his face off with a sleeve. That shirt is going to be barely salvageable. Rose helps him up. You turn around and head into the living room, leaving the four of them to chat amongst themselves. Sure enough, through the window you can see Aradia making her way down the hillside. You wave at her and she picks up the pace, skidding down the wet grass and mud.

"Are they here?" she asks when she's in speaking distance. You really wish you could invite her inside. The poor girl is soaked and her feet and the hem of her dress are completely coated in mud, which can't be comfortable. You nod, and just as you do, Rose, Jade, John and Strider enter the room. Jade is holding a towel, which she’s attempting to use to dry Becquerel off. Becquerel, in turn, seems to have no interest in drying off and is just walking alongside her, sniffing her pocket intently. There’s probably more treats in there.

“What do you mean ‘not a hanging out session?’” John asks, then stops in his tracks when he looks around the room. His eyes are wide as fuck behind the lenses of his rectangular glasses. “Oh. Wow. This is… a lot of smuppets.”

“Bro’s gotta make a living somehow,” Strider says, lagging back in the doorframe as his friends enter the living room proper. “Uh, I’m gonna go change out of this shirt real quick and get snacks and shit, so get comfy, I guess.”

As he leaves, he nods at Rose, who smiles in that sly, knowing way that only she seems to be able to. “So, to answer your question, John, we have a few surprise visitors who will be joining us tonight. Do you remember how we came to the house that one time when we were younger to investigate rumors of a ghost?”

“Of course we remember,” Jade says. She has made her way to the couch and sat down, still trying to de-mud Bec’s neck ruff to no avail. Bec has taken to licking her face gleefully. “Didn’t you prank us or something like that?”

“I did not,” Rose says very seriously. You give Aradia a look and take a step closer to the couch, which is when Becquerel notices you. His ears shoot up and he turns lightning fast towards you. You don’t have time to react before a white ball of fluff tackles you and takes you down. You hear Jade exclaim in surprise, but you’re more preoccupied with the amount of canine spit that’s currently in the process of covering your entire face. The living are saying something, but you can’t hear what it is, because Bec starts barking like a hellhound right into your ears. Everything is off-white fur and the smell of wet dog.

“Rose, stop fucking bantering and help!” you yell. This dog is probably about as large as you are. You ineffectively push at him to try and get some breathing space for yourself. Then, just like that, strong arms tug Bec away and free you from your furry prison. It’s Jade. Her arms are wrapped around Bec’s torso and she looks barely inconvenienced by this. She holds Bec up like he’s a puppy.

“Bec! Behave!” she says, as though Becquerel could understand her. He continues to bark at you loudly and generally make a ruckus. She looks up at Rose, eyes wide. “What in the world was that?”

“Tell Jade to control her dog!” you tell Rose and look down to examine the damage. Surprisingly, there aren’t any mud stains on your sweater. You guess the fact that the fabric is non-corporeal like the rest of you means that you’re immune to the mess that Bec made of Strider’s clothes. All that roughhousing did make your neck hurt like hell, though. Rose offers a hand and helps pull you up.

“Are you all correct?” Aradia says from the window. You nod tiredly and rub at the back of your neck with a hand. Jade lets Bec go and he immediately runs over to you. You’re prepared to get knocked over and mauled again, but apparently he’s had enough of that, because he settles for sniffing your legs intently, like he thinks you’re hiding dog treats in your pockets. You pat his head tentatively.

“What is he doing?” John asks from where he’s standing behind the couch. What a slow-ass motherfucker. “Wait. There isn’t actually a ghost here, is there?”

“Y’all good? Heard some screaming. Also, I got snacks,” Strider announces, holding a bag of sour cream and onion chips and a second bag of Starbursts. When Jade makes a grabby motion at him, he tosses the Starbursts to her. Becquerel instantly takes an interest in this new sniffable object his owner is holding and leaves you to investigate it. Jade tears open the bag of Starbursts with her teeth.

“Everything is fine. Becquerel simply got excited when he noticed Karkat’s presence. Ah- Karkat, didn’t you mention that the rats in the house didn’t see you?” Rose asks.

“Yeah, they couldn’t see me. The little furry bastards could hear me though, I think,” you try to say, but John intersects.

“Who’s Karkat?” Everyone shoots him an exasperated look and he brushes a strand of oily black hair behind his ear. “Is that the ghost?”

“Yes,” Rose says matter-of-factly. “There is, in fact, a ghost in the house. The reason that Dave and I invited you over is because I’m currently doing an investigation into who can or cannot see ghosts. Evidently, neither of you can, but Dave initially couldn’t, either. Our mission tonight is to figure out if it’s possible to get either of you to see Karkat. Also, for this same purpose, we’ve brought another ghost in. Karkat, is Aradia here yet?”

“No, she ditched us because this overlapped with a dentist appointment. Of course she’s here, look,” you say, gesturing towards Aradia. Rose’s eyes widen, and she stands up and rushes over to the window. She and Aradia appear to have a conversation of some sort, although it seems rather one-sided and Aradia sounds like she’s getting increasingly frustrated with Rose not being able to properly hear her responses to the deluge of questions she’s being met with.

“Wait, are you being serious or are you pranking us?” Jade asks Strider, scratching Bec’s neck where Bec has laid his head on her lap on the couch. Thankfully, he seems to be little more than a calm, white, fluffy blob now. Whether he’s worn himself out or if Jade has finally decided to actually stop her dog from destroying your house, you’re not sure.

“No, dead serious. Pun totally intended, we’re all corpses in the ground deader than Karkat the Unfriendly Ghost over the fuck here, like, our gravestones are considered fossils at this point, I think we’ve progressed from graverobbing to archaeology-” he starts and you are honestly not in the mood for another fucking Strider brand ramble, right now.

“Hey, asshole!” you yell, interrupting him. “What exactly was your plan for this hangout? Because if it’s just going to be you standing there and rambling, I’m not interested and I don’t think Aradia is, either!”

“Karkat, tell this girl to stop talking to me, please,” Aradia says from the window. You laugh humorlessly into the palm of your hand.

The rest of the evening pretty much goes that way, too. John pulls out a pack of cards and a game of Blackjack is attempted, but it doesn’t really work, because Aradia can’t read the numbers. At least the fact that the cards are levitating is enough to convince John and Jade that you and Aradia are actually there and not just fictional beings created by Rose and Strider to prank their asses, which would be a pretty funny prank if it existed, to be fair.

“Okay, truth or dare,” John asks, strewn on the couch upside down with his feet on the headrest and his arms hanging down to the ground. Aradia leans against the window next to him. Turns out that Strider can’t see her at all, and Rose can see her, but not as clearly as she can see you. She described it as being similar to the first few times she saw you- distant, noncorporeal, more of a feeling or a humanoid mist than an actual person. Bec has conquered the rest of the couch and Rose has taken the recliner, leaving you, Strider and Jade to sit on the floor.

“Dare,” you say.

“He says truth,” Strider translates. It seems he’s made it a point to give them false information regardless of what you say, and it drives you insane. Rose seems amused by how you’d fly off the handle at him every time he did so, but now you’ve given up and you just let him distort your words.

“Okay, umm…” John ponders. This is the last ditch effort that Rose has come up with to get John and Jade to see you and maybe Aradia, too. So far, not working out too great. You don’t think Strider distorting everything you say helps. “What’s your favorite movie?”

“Oh, easy. Pretty in Pink, obviously,” you say without missing a beat, speaking over Strider’s inevitable ‘what kind of boring-ass truth is that’ nonsense. “I mean, West Side Story is good, too, but I just think-”

“Hold up, did you say Pretty in Pink?” Strider exclaims. “Oh my god, you’re really that balls deep in this romance shit, aren’t you?”

“It’s a good fucking movie!” you yell.

“Oh, now I know you’re trolling. Like, I wasn’t sure if you were being serious about the rice with ketchup thing, but that movie sucks! No way am I going to believe that your ghost likes Pretty in Pink, Dave,” John says.

“What is with you people?” you shout.

“Yeah, actually, John, you don’t have the right to criticize other people’s taste in movies,” Strider says.

Later, you, Jade and Strider go in the kitchen to fetch more snacks. Strider grabs some Spicy Doritos from the top shelf of a cabinet that has been meant for plates and cups as long as you’ve been here, but is now a puppet and sword cabinet like all the other cabinets in the house. You and Jade are both too short to reach up that high, but Strider doesn’t even need to tiptoe. “Hey, Jade, grab the AJ from the fridge, would you? And, uh, be careful when you open it, it might be kind of full.”

Jade tugs the door open and a few shurikens fall from inside. She grimaces as she reaches in, careful not to touch any of the walls just in case they’re boobytrapped. You think she’s starting to pick up on the rather unconventional lifestyle of the Striders. When she’s got it, she and Strider head towards the hallway. The fridge didn’t close properly, so you push it closed with your hip. “You forgot to close this.”

“Oh, yeah, I did. Sorry, Karkat,” Jade says before waltzing out. You scoff in resignation for a second and go to follow her, but then you stop in your tracks.

Did she… respond to you?

It’s 1 AM and Rose has been asking Aradia to repeat the same sentence over and over for 2 minutes until you finally butt in and repeat it for her. Rose taps her temple with the end of her pen and says, “I thought that was what it was, but I wasn’t sure.”

…

At some point, you start to learn Strider’s school schedule. Now that he has no excuse to not respond when you ask him about things, you’ve started to actually transfer information between each other. On Thursdays, he comes home at 5 PM sharp. On Fridays, anywhere between 6 and 7, because on Fridays, he goes to John and Jade’s house to play video games with John. On Sundays, he’s away from home between three and five, and on Tuesday, school doesn’t start until 11. You start to feel like time actually carries meaning again.

One morning, he jolts awake, panicked, as you enter through the wood of the door. He scrambles up, desperately pulling his socks on. You furrow your brows. “Who set a swarm of bees free up your asshole?”

“I’m fuckin’ late, bro,” he says, pulling a nasty-ass dirty shirt on. “I gotta anime girl this shit in a little well-fittin’ sailor costume and a piece of toast in my mouth, like sweater vest and all that shit, man, Mrs. Echidna is gonna _kill_ me-”

“You are disgusting, take a shower first-” you try to interrupt, pulling the same pair of jeans he’s worn for three weeks in a row out of his hands and replacing it with a clean pair. “I’m not letting you out of this house with hair like that, at least use some dry shampoo-”

“Karkat, Karkat, you don’t get it, I’m gonna fail this course if I’m not there in time-” Strider panics, pulling his letterman jacket on and slinging his backpack over his shoulder haphazardly. He rushes down the stairs three steps at a time and shoves his shoes on. “I’ll shower when I get back, see ya!”

“Wait! You haven’t eaten anything, your blood sugar’s-” Slam goes the front door. You groan. He never learns and it drives you mad. In a few hours, he’s going to come home and complain about how tired he is even though it’s his fault that he didn’t eat anything and he slept through his alarm four times. He’s already driving down the hill towards town when you open the door, but you still yell after him. “At least eat an actual lunch this time instead of that protein bar bullshit, dickwad!”


	7. Before the Snowstorm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey y'all!! we just hit 1k hits on this fic a few days ago and i'm hdjfhsdfsdfgabvdnaf i cannot express how grateful i am to everyone who's reading this and leavin comments i owe my life to you all anyway these chapters keep getting longer and i can't control them. send help

“I still do not understand. Why don’t Emthys and Taswat simply elope?” Aradia asks. The thick cloud cover above her makes the dull light cast on her face bland and gray. Soft drizzling rain wets the grass on the hill and the bare bark of the trees at the top of it. The chilling wind blows into the kitchen and on your face. The house is quiet, as it often is at this time of day. You've taken to discussing your favorite novel with Aradia to pass the time.

"Because of Emthys' career! She just got that big promotion a few chapters ago, remember? And besides, where would they go? Their friends and families live in the city," you explain, trying to represent the situation with some convoluted hand signals. Left index finger being Taswat, left middle finger being Emthys, right index finger being Emthys' career and so on. Aradia looks even more confused. You sigh. "Obviously you're not getting this."

"I'm not, no," she says, shaking her head. "It seems the only problem is Emthys' pride and not wanting to get teased by her friends. Unless I'm misunderstanding and Jody and Amanda would completely abandon her upon finding out about her relationship with Taswat?"

"No, it'd just be teasing," you try, but Aradia interrupts you.

"That being the case, the entire story revolves around the idea that Emthys is just too scared to pursue the relationship, or too proud to stand her friends' jokes. So really, Emthys is the only one getting in the way of the story, which means that Emthys is simultaneously the bad guy and the good guy. That makes no sense," Aradia says.

"No, it does, you just-" you stumble. "It's- it's more complicated than that-"

Before you can explain yourself, a figure enters the room fast enough to startle you into silence. It feels like a lightning crack, like the reveal of a villain in a B-list horror film. You turn around slowly and find the hulking shape of Bro standing at the kitchen counter. He's even taller than Strider is, and twice as wide. He looks like he stars in treadmill ads in children's nightmares and eats nothing but raw protein, and the lenses of his ridiculous shades look pitch black from the outside, leaving his face practically unreadable at all times.

Now, you've never seen Bro do anything inexcusably terrible. Sure, the motherfucker’s gory ventriloquism porn is creepy, but like Strider says, he’s got to make a living somehow. And yeah, he does own several dozen close-range weapons with incredibly sharp blades, but you’ve never seen him hurt anybody with them. He might just be an avid collector. Bro is an unreadable slab of granite covered thickly in fake blood, but as far as you know, he’s an ultimately harmless one.

Still, you can’t shake the pervasive nervousness that you feel every time you’re in the same room as him.

He glances over at the corner of the kitchen you've backed into and you close your eyes, as though shutting him from your field of view could make you more invisible to him than you already are. When you open them again, he's gone. One of the cabinets is open. There's a puppet on the counter with its head torn off and what you really hope is ketchup is splattered on the table.

“Was that Bro?” Aradia asks. You nod. He only seems to show his face when he’s filming or fetching food. Beyond that, he’s always either in his room or out of the house. Adds to his crypticism, you guess. Aradia sniffles and wipes her nose with the side of her hand, fascinated eyes locked on the countertop. “I like the fake blood.”

…

You cough into the crook of your elbow. The air is grayed out by dust flying around the room when Strider pulls a cardboard box from beneath the bed. You’re sitting cross-legged on the wooden floor of the attic with him next to you, leaning forward on his knees. The window is open to let out some of the musty smell. The box has an old label for whatever used to be stored in it before it ended up under your bed. A small cloud puffs up into the room as Strider opens the lid.

“Oof, how old are these?” he asks, examining the old VHS cases covered in such a thick layer of dust on them that you can barely see the covers. Strider wipes across the top of one with his index finger, leaving a very clear stripe on it. “The Brady Bunch: Season 4? Do you have the other seasons or just this one? Sixteen Candles… Annie Hall… Ooh, Back to the Future.”

“Hey, I’ve been looking for that!” you say, grabbing the cassette from Strider’s long, nasty fingers. He makes a mock-offended noise and continues to wade through the box. You examine the cover. Wonder if this even works anymore. Michael J. Fox’s soft-looking face is as kind as ever. When Strider breaks out into sudden coughs, you look up at him with worry. “Are you sure you want to be the one going through these? The only thing I hate more than the idea of you being here is you asphyxiating here and me getting stuck with you for the next century with no escape.”

“Oh, don’t jinx it, Karboy,” Strider says, voice faltering there as he coughs again. Christ, that sounds painful. Is that how you sound all the time? Still, his lungs shattering doesn’t stop him from not shutting the fuck up. “You gotta knock on some wood to break this curse before we’re guaranteed to give our firstborn sons to the wicked witch of the woods. Hear that wood creak in response, otherwise it doesn’t count. It’s like informed consent, you know what they say, not the absence of a no but a continued and enthusiastic creaking noise loud enough to permanently damage your eardrums.”

“Why are you like this?” you ask, desperately.

“Just the old Strider charm,” he says and the muscles in his face move weirdly in a way that you can only assume indicate he’s winking behind those douchey shades of his. Silence falls for a few seconds as you look at him, formulating suitable insults in your head. Before you can launch any of them at him, devastating him for the rest of his life, no doubt, he draws a quick breath. “Anyway, you mind if I sell these to the pawn shop? Make some of that sweet moolah? Make it rain, roll in that dough, and I ain’t talkin’ about that Ben & Jerry’s cookie shit although the motherfuckers do make damn good ice cream.”

“Excuse me?” you interrupt. “Yes, I fucking mind, you ass of a particularly diarrhetic horse! This is my stuff! You can't just take and sell my stuff! I'm pretty sure you could get jail time for that, unless they legalized _theft_ within the last three decades!"

"Bro, it ain't illegal to sell a dead guy's stuff, it's just practical recycling, savin' the planet just like I was told to the Paris Agreement, which I personally signed," Strider says, grabbing a whole stack of tapes. "Nobody uses VHSes anymore anyway, the fuck are you going to do with them? You definitely aren't watching them with that busted old piece of shit in the corner!"

"They're _mine_!" you yell at a fever pitch, grabbing the whole stack from Strider's arms, and backing away like a cornered animal. He looks actually surprised by how violently you screeched. Honestly, you are, too. Why the fuck did you get so defensive over some stupid movies, Vantas? Why does it matter? Moron. You drop the tapes and your arms go ghostly around them before wrapping around your torso protectively. The cassettes clatter to the floor, some passing through your sweater as they tumble down. There's silence for a moment. "You can't sell them."

"Alright. I won't," Strider says, lifting his hands in resignation or maybe as a sign of an attempted truce. He starts speaking, apprehensive, but falls back into that fake-sounding "cool" Strider tone right away. "30 or 40 bucks in my attic as a family heirloom or whatever, that's cool. I can live without some cash money, keep the assets for the future, yeah?"

You sigh roughly. "Just stop talking, you flaccid orangutan asscrack."

"Please, Mr. Asscrack was my father," he says with that stupid half-grin on his face, clearly holding back laughter. "Just Flaccid will suffice."

You angrily call him some pretty creative names for about fifteen seconds and he can't hold back the laughter anymore.

As you're gathering up the tapes, you hear the scrape of the cardboard box against old floorboards. Strider speaks up. "There's one tape left in here."

You turn around as he takes it out. Unlike the others, it's not in a case. Just a black cassette. There's no label on it or anything. You scoot closer on your knees and watch Strider twist and turn the tape in his hands, looking for some indication of what it contains. You furrow your eyebrows. "You think it's blank?"

"Shouldn't you be the one who knows that?" he asks. The sarcasm in his voice is just a faint veil for genuine curiosity underneath. "But no, I don't. Like, why would it be here with all these important tapes if it was blank? You know, important, like the fourth season of the Brady Bunch."

"Oh, shut your trap, would you, Strider?" you growl, grabbing the cassette from his hands rather harshly. It doesn't have any identifying marks or indications of being used. It's just a boring old tape. You give it back to him. "Whatever. Who the fuck knows."

"So can I sell this one?" he teases, holding it up, and grins victoriously as you launch into another tirade and try to pull it away from him. Alas, he is taller than you, and has longer arms.

…

Strider’s foot bounces up and down rapidly. Rain lashes violently against the window, filling the room with sounds. He’s hunched over his laptop at the desk, hands right above the keyboard, ready but not moving. His eyebrows are furrowed in thought. You look up from a book he gave you- the Great Gatsby. Rose lent it to him to read for their Literature class, but he told you he already read the SparkNotes - he has the attention span of a five-year-old - so he just gave it to you instead. You never did get to reading the Great Gatsby, as shocking as that sounds. Strider is rambling to himself. “Come on, dude, it’s only gotta be like 4 thousand characters, that’s nothing, that’s like maybe a page if you really push it, shouldn’t be that hard to just come up with some bullshit ‘bout some 19th-century bearded European bitches…”

“What the fuck are you on about?” you ask and he jumps in his chair like he forgot you were here. It seems to take him a few moments to realize he must’ve been talking out loud. His face does this tight grimace that you’ve decided to interpret as embarrassment. He rolls his shoulders and leans back in the chair.

“How much do you know about political ideologies?” he asks. The bouncing of his leg starts up again. You blink.

“Excuse me?”

“You know, your anarchisms, your communisms, whatever. Cos, man, I’m tryin’ to write this essay, but goddamn, I haven’t got a single clue what the fuck I’m doing, so it ain’t really working,” he explains, gesturing to the laptop screen and swiveling back around in the desk chair. You haul yourself up and walk over to his side. One glorious word stands proud like a centurion on a battlefield in the top left corner of the document.

_The _

“...Okay, well, I guess that’s a start in the most technical sense of the word,” you say. “What’s the exact wording of the assignment?”

You go through it with him. It with him. It's been a long while since you wrote anything, much less anything academic, and definitely never anything on a computer like this. Still, even after a 30-year break, you have a better grasp on the art of essays than Strider does.

"It's spelled with a K," you say, pointing to the screen. Strider backspaces and writes "Carl Marks." Then he turns to you, grinning.

"Like ‘KS?’ Like that?"

"I'm going to fucking kill you," you grumble and lean over him to write the damn name yourself. He keeps finding these ways to troll you, but just makes shit harder for both of you instead. "We'd already be done with this goddamn thing if you stopped shitting around and actually wrote!"

"Like I know fuck-all about this shit. Why do you think I asked for your help? Just to get to hang out with you more? Um, nah. No offense, dude, but you're not exactly the life of the party. Pun fully intended. You are literally the death of the party, Karkat, you ever think of that? Death of the Bolshevik party. Wait, holy shit, I have to write that down," he says, going to open that chat client he uses to talk to his friends. You scramble to pull his hand from the touchpad while cursing over his ramble. "Deader than an anti-vaxxer’s kids-"

"Just- stop! Stop! Stop doing this! Any and all things you're doing, cease them immediately!" you tell him. “We haven’t even written about America yet- this essay is not complete until we talk about how Reagan’s bullshit is ruining the country.”

“Don’t you mean _was_ ruining the country?” Strider asks. “I don’t think he’s doing much anymore.”

"Reagan's not president anymore?" you ask, holding Strider's hand above his head by the wrist, the other locked in an intense wrestling match to keep him from closing the document. Your voice is strained by the effort you're putting into holding him back. The bastard is strong as fuck.

"Uh, well, no, obviously," Strider says, sounding frustratingly unaffected by your ongoing tussle. "It's been thirty years, Karkat, Reagan’s been dead for like a decade."

"What? Bullshit!" you say, struggling to redirect his hand to the text part of the document instead of the red X in the top right. You tassetly ignore the fact that you know that of course he’s right. You also ignore the burning feeling of wrongness that came with this revelation. “Next you’re going to tell me that the USSR nuked the White House or some shit.”

“Oh, the USSR doesn’t exist anymore either,” he says nonchalantly.

“What the fuck?” you yell, letting go of his hand. He instantly closes the document seemingly out of principle rather than any intention to actually write his stupid jokes down. “Since fucking when?”

“God, before I was even born? Why would I know the exact date?” Strider asks. He opens the browser and types “whend the ussr collapse” into the address bar. A page pops up, on the side of which a familiar red flag you’ve been taught to fear since age 6 sits. “December 26, 1991” stands in bold letters in a box in the middle of the page.

“Holy shit! Oh my god!” you gasp. “So there’s no more threat of nuclear apocalypse or any of that other shit?”

“Well, yeah, there is, but it’s mostly not Russia-based anymore? More of like… North Korea and shit,” Strider says, leaning back in his chair. “Well, I mean, there’s no like, second Cold War going on, Cold War II ain’t happening, at least as of right now? And we don’t like Russia still, they’re still a weird backward arctic piece of shit nowhere place with some sucky politics and stuff, but they’re not really the number one priority anymore, I don’t think?”

“I am so fucking glad to have someone as well versed in world politics as you for my main window to the outside world,” you sigh labouredly.

It’s taken you a few hours to work out all the kinks in his writing, as well as to sort out all the necessary history you’ve missed out on. The world has changed so fucking much, you think after you’re done, sitting on the roof while Strider wastes his life rewatching the same internet videos he’s already watched four times. The sky is clouded over, again. It’s cold. You wrap your arms around yourself. They provide no warmth. You’re so goddamn stuck.

…

"Hey, 'Kat," Strider says one night, tossing his jacket onto the back of the desk chair. It's Saturday. You know this because he had school yesterday, but not today. Still, he's been gone the whole day. Usually, on Saturdays, all he does is sit on his bed and do fuck knows what on his laptop for hours on end. He looks exhausted, dragging his feet. And when you look up from your maintenance on tiny Prospit, you find out why. It's been one of those days again.

A fresh bandaid that wasn't there in the morning dots his right hand, complemented by another one on his left forearm, and the hint of a huge bruise trailing from the crook of his elbow up and under the red half-sleeves of his shirt. For the past few weeks, whenever these things pop up again, he’s been trying to avoid talking about them. You haven’t brought it up, either. It never felt like your place to ask. He doesn't even look at you, but you stare. "So when are you planning to tell me what happened to you?"

Strider looks up for a moment, confused. You look down at his arm, and he brings his hand up to tug the sleeve of his shirt down a little bit, as if to hide the darkening bruise.

"Oh, what, these? No biggie. None of these are biggies. Uh, training, skating accidents, all that shit, you know the shenanigans a man gets up to. Wild night, if you know what I mean," he says and chuckles in a way so fake that you could find it floating in a glass of water on an elderly man's nightstand. When he glances over and finds you still staring, his mouth goes into a line. "Look, stop being so weird about it, okay? Shit happens. It keeps happening! It's normal. Shit's natural. Part of the circle of life-" this part he sings, oh your god- "and it rules us all, as the good… mildly racist animated movie tells us."

"Stop singing!" you tell him after he has already stopped singing. You rub the bridge of your nose and groan. His face grows more and more stoic as you speak. "Why are you literally the most obtuse human being alive? I'm not completely braindead, Strider, I can tell that something's been going on with you ever since you got here! What do you get up to when you leave the house and come back beaten up? Do you have a job on the side at an underground wrestling ring? Do you like to fling yourself off cliffs for shits and giggles?"

"Hey, actually, why do you care?" he asks. He's not shouting or even really speaking in an angry tone, but his voice is different from usual, tighter, harder, like he's standing behind a wall of stone. The words leave his mouth fast and violently. "I'm not a kid. I don't need you to look after me all the time, yeah? Just leave me be for once. I don't know, find something else to do with your time. Like, you're always prying and bugging, don't for once and give me some breathing space, okay? You're here all the time, every day, it's like you're chained to my side whenever I'm here-"

"How many times do I need to say it before it gets through your thick skull that I cannot leave the house? I've tried, and it doesn't fucking work!" you shout.

"Maybe I should be the bigger man and leave, then," he says. That shuts you up. For a few long moments, you just stare at him, in shock, in confusion, you don’t know. And he stares back. His face is unreadable and stoic. If only you could see his eyes and know what the hell is going through his head. The tension remains heavy in the air. Then he breaks it by grabbing his jacket from the chair and marching past you, shoving you to the side with a shoulder. "I'm going to John's."

"Wait. Strider. Come back! Strider!" you say, trying to grab his arm before he's out the door, but he walks fast and jumps the stairs down two at a time. The house shakes to its foundation with his slam of the door, and he's gone. You rush to the window and watch his car disappear down the hill. Goddammit, Vantas.

That night is probably the longest one you’ve been through in a while. You pace through the kitchen. Stare out the window. Why are you getting so worked up over this? You curse yourself out for being so involved. So what if he’s sulking out at a friend’s house or gets hit by a car or- or- whatever! Nevermind, right? That’s his business! You shouldn’t care! You don’t care. You’re just a ghost being plagued by the worst mortal in existence and his infuriating bespectacled face and his stupid music and his godforsaken fucking deadpan expression. Stop pacing. Vantas! Stop pacing! Your feet shuffle along the torn-up rug in the hallway that Bro hasn’t yet replaced. A puppet glares at you menacingly from the shelf. You flip it off. Motherfucking Striders and their horseshit and-

The sun comes up. You sit on the staircase in defeat, cradling your head in your hands. Why have you been panicking over this all night? There’s literally no reason why this should be fucking you up this much. It has to be your self-loathing. Yes, that makes sense. Your moronic brain has decided that this is your fault and that you should be vexed by guilt over it for hours on end, when in fact it was him who decided to ditch your ass for John. You were only trying to help. Why were you trying to help? Dumb mortal. No, it’s you. You are the dumb one, stupid, meddling with his matters. Who cares what happens to him? You? Just because he lives here? Fuck no. That’d be pathetic.

The door clicks open very quietly. You jump to your feet right away and stumble over. With a creak, it comes ajar. Sure enough, Strider stands there in the doorway, apologetic and nervous. You’re just about bursting with rage. “Where the fuck were you? Did you sleep at John’s? What the fuck is your deal, oh my god, I can’t believe your inane bullcrap, you’re absolutely going to give me a stroke just by the sheer density of your skull-”

“Is Bro home?” he whispers, so quiet that you can barely hear him. You blink.

“I think so. I haven’t seen him leave today-” you say, and are cut off by a deep breath Strider takes. He enters the house, feet so light it’s almost like he’s tiptoeing. You move back to let him walk past you and go up the stairs, stepping over the creakiest stairs with ease. Each step he takes feels like an eternity. The only sounds he makes are the soft click of the door closing and the ever so quiet tap of his shoes on the wooden flooring. You follow him, mimicking the quietness. You have the advantage of your thick socks, but you’re heavier than him despite the hefty height advantage he has on you.

You inch the attic door closed behind you. He watches you and releases a long breath when the door is closed. Rubbing his eyes beneath his shades like he just woke up, it’s as if he’s only now becoming aware that you’re there, and apparently, you terrify him. He opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens again. His voice is coarse and soft. It sounds like he’s trying to keep it quiet. “I shouldn't have rushed out on you like that. Or said any of that mean shit I said either. I didn't mean it, I just… Um. I was… freaked out, I guess, but like, real mature of me. Full-on aged gouda, fine wine shit, served with a Michelin star fresh right there on your plate. Price tag’s at 5K just for the cheese levels of mature. So, uh… I guess… I’m sorry.”

You can’t help gaping at him. Out of everything you were expecting, this was not it. When he eventually looks up to meet your eye, you regain your sanity. You scoff. “Well, yeah, you better be. Fucking douchebag move! If your ass had fallen into the river and drowned and you became a sad little ghost like me wandering the streets, it would have been 100% your fault. I thought you died! Not that I would have cared, obviously-”

Strider chokes on a tiny laugh behind the palm of his hand. “You are such a fucking tsundere ass sometimes, Jesus Christmas-”

“I am not a-” you stumble at the weird word. “A… sun… uh… I’m not!”

“You don’t even know what tsundere means and you’re acting tsundere trying to prove that it doesn’t-” Strider says, voice cracking and breaking into laughter. It’s genuine, even if it’s wheezy and muffled into the sleeve of his jacket. “Oh my god, Karkat, you’re turning my life into an actual anime, holy fucking shit-”

“Would you shut up about anime, you shit-eating bonehead! You keep talking about it and I don’t know what it is! Stop fucking laughing at me!”

…

“So I spent the night at Rose’s place,” Strider says some fifteen minutes or so later, smacking his lips. You’re sitting on his bed next to him. He grabbed himself a bag of Bugles and an apple juice box for breakfast from a dresser drawer where he keeps his socks. This guy is a complete clusterfuck of a person. “I tried to go to John and Jade’s place, but Jane and Jake had some friends over, so I just went to the Lalonde house instead. Did you know her room is like, so fucking messy? I thought I was unorganized but man. She had dust bunnies on trash on dust bunnies on like just a whole ass violin. I really don’t know how she hasn’t broken that thing yet. Anyway, she was surprised to see me at her door at whenever the fuck I showed up o'clock. Fair, honestly. Slept in her guest room. Who the hell needs a guest room in the year of our lord, 2018? Rose fuckin’ Lalonde, that’s who. She kicked me out like, the second I woke up, which, I guess, fair on her part. But, anyway. Point is. Before we went to bed, we… had a bit of a chat, I guess. A feelings jam, as we like to call them.”

“Oh, wow, sounds just fucking titillating,” you say, staring out the window. The clouds are beginning to lose the hue of sunrise and turn back into a bland, pale gray.

“Yeah, man. It was hardcore,” Strider says, taking a break to take a long-ass slurp of that apple juice of his. You can see the yellow-orange liquid move through the plastic straw. He smacks his lips and makes an overdramatic gratified “ah” sound like a Coca-Cola commercial. “Anyhow. We talked about… Some shit… Lalonde is kind of a junior psychiatrist, and she seems to have gotten kind of obsessed with me ever since I moved here? Don’t know what that’s about. Like, probably partially about you? But yeah. She was all up in my business about ‘feeling threatened’ by ‘emotional intimacy’ and other vaguely homoerotic-soundin’ shit like that.”

“...What’s homoerotic about emotional intimacy?” you ask. Strider just kind of stares at you for a few seconds, and then he opens his mouth, as though he’s about to say something. Instead of saying anything, though, he seems to struggle internally a little bit before he just closes his mouth and turns away. He opens his mouth again, just says ‘uh’ quietly, closes his mouth. Opens. Closes. Like a fish out of water. You can practically hear the whirring of gears in his head right now. He’s really struggling.

“Well, I mean, ‘cos like, gay… uh… gay dudes are like… really…” he trails off there, still mouthing something that doesn’t really look like words. He shoves a hand through his hair. “...Cool dudes… aren’t… like… that.”

You stare at him, waiting for him to say something more than that. He does not. Instead, he just stares at you, mouth in a tight line and eyebrows furrowed, like he’s expecting you to give a response to that. You gesture at him to encourage him to continue. He does not get the hint. Ten seconds pass in silence before you let out a hoarse, frustrated breath and rub your temple. “Alright. Awesome.”

Apparently that breaks the seal of his resolve, because he immediately starts to babble like a word fountain. “Well, I mean, obviously I don’t mean that like, gay guys can’t be cool, or something like that, that’s not even what I meant like, at all, like, I bet there’s a ton of cool gay dudes out there, like, I don’t know. The guy from Brooklyn-99? He’s pretty cool. I mean. He’s not a real person, he’s… fictional- but isn’t there like, another gay dude in that? Like, a gay actor? I mean-”

“Shut up!” you say, holding up a hand, and for once, thankfully, miraculously, it works. He closes his mouth and looks away from you. It seems his gaze has locked on to the corner of a poster on the wall where the tape has fallen off and the poster is now sadly drooping down, showing the blank white back of it to the world. You sigh, rearranging yourself so that you can wrap your arms around your knees. “For the record, and yes, this is thoroughly embarrassing and unexpected from me, I know… I’m sorry too.”

“Huh?” Strider responds dumbly.

“You heard me!” you snap. “Don’t make me repeat it! It was wrong of me to try and police your comings and goings and shit like that and I should really be better with boundaries but, you know, past Karkat’s always got to fuck everything up for everyone, so I guess that’s just out of the fucking question.”

Strider considers that for a moment. “I would say the one fucking shit up is more like, all the time Karkat. Not necessarily past Karkat. You should take responsibility for yourself and not some past version of you, dude.”

“Shut your trap, Strider,” you say. He shrugs. Blessed silence falls again.

“Well, I guess… Apology accepted? I don’t know if you were really in the wrong, but… I guess whatever helps you sleep at night,” he says, eventually.

“Don’t rub salt in the wound, asshole. I can’t sleep no fucking matter what I tell myself. And trust me. I’ve tried a lot of things.”

He chuckles at that. As much as you try to stop it, your lip quirks up, too. That wasn't a good joke. His sense of humor is garbage.

…

Strider fiddles with the lid of a bottle full of some sort of chemical mixture. Down here, in the basement, where the only light is the faint glow of a flashlight stuffed between cardboard boxes and covered in cloth, you can barely see a thing. He's still wearing his shades. You don't know how the fuck he does it. He dips film into a strange tincture in a big plastic vat. You've seen him do this time and time again.

"Snapped a pic of the mall," he explains. At first, you think it's half just him rambling to himself. Then he continues. "Thought maybe you'd want some sort of reference for your little miniature town thing. Still don't really know what the thing is, but I know it's a bit out of date, so."

"You mean tiny Prospit?" you ask, leaning against a stack of cardboard boxes. “Let me guess. You made sure to pick the most ironically terrible angle for it? Or, this would be funnier, you snapped a photo of a completely different building altogether to trick me into ruining my masterpiece that’s been in the works for literal decades?”

“Oh, that would have been funny as shit,” Strider says. He definitely sounds disappointed in himself as much as he’s presumably getting aroused by getting to make a complete fool of you. “But nah. This is the real deal. Thought didn’t even cross my mind. If my mind is the Golden Gate Bridge, the thought is the San Francisco Bay. Literally the opposite of crossin’ it. It went under. Or, actually, is that… technically crossing like, after all? No, ‘cos the Golden Gate Bridge crosses San Francisco Bay, so it’s really more like reverse crossing. Yeah. So metaphor totally on point. Secured. Target located, locked and loaded-”

“Okay, I get it, dicks-for-eyes!” you snap amicably. The corner of Strider’s lip twitches up and he dips another photo into the liquid. You watch, frowning. “Have you really not come up with any better ways to fucking develop film? Did photography as an art form completely die on the same day that I did and never evolve beyond what it was in the ‘80s? Or are you just being a hipster for no fucking reason?”

“Uh, let me think about it,” Strider says. Then he stops talking. Normally, you’d be excited about him shutting the fuck up, - truly, a gift from the malevolent gods who control the world in which you live - but right now, you can hear the internal clock ticking in his head, counting the seconds and preparing for you to get fed up with his bullshit. You don’t have time for that crap, so you open your mouth to complain, and it’s exactly in that instant of seeing you puff up that he finishes, “yeah, no, I’m just a hipster.”

“Oh, isn’t that just fucking wonderful for you,” you say a little bit half-heartedly. “I don’t think your hobbies will ever cease to befuddle me. If you’ve developed better photography in the last 30 years, why are you still using the same shit that guy who did the school newspaper’s photos used when I was fucking alive?”

“It’s about the aesthetic, Karkat. The aesthetic and the irony. I’m an ironic hipster. You wouldn’t get it, it’s too civilized for your brain. I’m just too cool for school,” he says, eyebrows raised up high as if he’s some fucking connoisseur. You scoff and shake your head.

“Bullshit. And what about all that gross dead shit you keep on all the tables and shelves? That hasn’t even heard of the concept of coolness. It’s fucking disgusting! I’m dead and it even creeps me out!” you shoot back.

“You kidding? My dead shit is rad as fuck! You wouldn’t get it, it’s all about like, mortality and shit, it’s so cool,” Strider says, and he actually sounds genuinely excited about it, even if it’s masked by layers and layers of trying to appear somehow detached and unemotional. “Nobody gets how cool my dead shit is for some reason. They’re all like ‘Dave, that’s so morbid!’ and ‘is that a dead scorpion?’ His fucking name is Flippy and yes, he’s a real scorpion and no, you can’t touch him!”

“Oh, trust me, I wouldn’t have even if you begged me to on both fucking knees,” you tell him. Something about the fact that this is close to his heart resonates with you. It reminds you of… well, Aradia. It reminds you of Aradia almost enough to make you feel genuine sympathy for this faker. If Strider could see and hear her, they might actually get along. “Hey. You remember Rose’s experiment?”

“Yeah, of course I do. It was like, a week ago,” Strider says condescendingly. You sigh and roll your eyes.

"Yeah, yeah, asshole. Anyway, did you… see Aradia? Or hear her? Or anything like that? In case you managed to forget with all your three brain cells, Aradia’s the ghost girl that lives in the woods up the hill.” Strider pours some more chemicals into the vat and fiddles with a device that you don’t really understand the purpose of, humming to himself.

“Yeah, I remember who Aradia is,” he says after a few long moments of either intense thought or just not focusing on you. “Think I would remember if I’d seen her. So, nah. Not a peep. In my eyes, it’s like she didn’t exist at all. I’d say she’s ghostin’, but I feel like that’s kinda on the nose, even for yours truly.”

“Strider, if nothing else, I’m massively amazed by your dumbfounding lack of self-awareness. If there was ever a term to describe you and the general air with which you carry that shambling twig from the sewers of the most disgusting fast food restaurant this side of the Atlantic that you call a body from room to room, it would be whatever the polar fucking opposite of ‘on the goddamn nose’ is!” you explain to him. He ignores you, choosing instead to focus on fondling that weird photography device some more. You huff in frustration. “The reason I brought her up, you never-improving piece of mummified feces, is because I think that she might actually be able to stand your nonsense a little bit better than me, on account of having a supernatural tolerance for insufferable dickweeds like yourself!”

“Really?” Strider asks, looking up. “What makes you think dead Victorian toddler girl who presumably can’t read or write her own damn name would have anything in common with me?”

“Well, you do have that last point in common. Also, you both like dead shit,” you say, interrupting the start of Strider's inevitable offended tirade. “You both look deadpan at first, but are actually losers just waiting for someone to ask you about all the bones and repulsive preserved toes in jars that you keep squirreled away in your dressing gowns and places of residence.”

Strider chuckles. “Dude, what? She keeps bones up her dress? I have to meet this girl, actually.”

…

It’s going to take a bit of finagling, considering she can’t write and he can’t hear her, but you think you’ll make it work. Aradia slips and slides down the muddy slope of the hill as you bring a chair to the window next to where Strider is sitting. For once, the day has been bright, but now the sun is starting to set and paint the blue sky darker and redder. A thick cover of leaves makes crispy sounds beneath the bare soles of Aradia's feet. You touch the barrier. "And you're sure Bro won't come back?"

"I'm sure! He's probably halfway across the Pacific by now. Like I told you, this trip's going to last at least a week," Strider says, yawning. He's wearing another one of those ironically terrible shirts - it's white and has a huge, painfully colored 'Visit Houston, Texas,' logo plastered on it like a cheap piece of tourist crap. You cannot fathom how he dares to wear that piece of shit outdoors. Aradia makes it down and places her hands on the barrier. Her hair is full of twigs and leaves.

"Hello, Karkat," she says, but her eyes are on Strider. Of the emotions that she's shown you, as rare as they are, curiosity is definitely the most common one. You see it in her when you explain modern inventions and when you tell her about your favorite books. You see it when she looks at Rose or Strider, not having seen any living people for decades, and you see it when she shows off her collection, gazing proudly at every bone and severed animal limb. "Why is he here?"

"Well, I've told you about how he has a bunch of weird dead animals and shit in jars upstairs before, remember? So I thought the two of you could… I don't know. Talk about that. Which is why I asked you to bring some of your collection and all that shit along," you explain. Aradia nods in understanding, but Strider is looking at you, confused. You tilt your head towards Aradia, and after a second or so of working it out, his face morphs into a look of revelation and he nods, peering out the window, at the ready.

When she sees his eyes - or, his shades, more like - pointed towards herself, Aradia shuffles uncomfortably, rubbing her hands together. She's clearly itching to pull something out and showcase it. "You're sure he won't freak out?"

"Positive. What have you got?" you encourage, prompting Strider to shoot a small glance your way. Aradia hesitates for a moment longer before pulling out a fox skull. You've seen this one before- you can tell by the fact that there's a chip missing from the corner of the eye hole, and both of the canines have fallen out from the top jaw. 

It's not very well preserved- the bone is dried out and has gained a nasty color from being out in the woods, but Strider seems enthralled. "Oh, wow. That's a damn nice skull. Uh… a fox? Kinda hard to tell without those teeth there, but looks that way."

Aradia looks a bit surprised, and then nods in a way that’s rather subdued objectively, but violent by Aradia standards. Strider, though, looks to you for confirmation, and you nod in turn. You feel the corner of your mouth twitch up. Strider puts out a hand - you're expecting the barrier to stop him for some stupid reason, but of course it passes right through the open window. Aradia tentatively places the skull in his hand.

Carefully, Strider examines the bone from all sides, prodding places the missing teeth should be occupying and brushing the cheekbone with a finger. He's genuinely enchanted by this old musty skull, and you've only really seen him like this when he's working on his music. He offers it back to Aradia, smiling. "Dude, that's cool as hell!"

Aradia looks incredulous. With this validation, she pulls out a few things you find a bit creepier- a snakeskin, an intact hip bone, a broken off antler and a beautiful, albeit dead, green beetle. Strider looks amazed as he examines the scales on the snakeskin.

"Oh, fuck, this is rad! Where'd you find it? Did you see the snake, or was it already gone by the time you got there? This thing is like, frayed, look at that, that's so weird! And look at the holes on this! It must've been some sort of parasite infection or something-"

Aradia looks more thrilled than you've ever seen her. There's even a little bit of joy to her monotone voice. "Yes, tell him that it was one of those neck-ring snakes and you can still see the yellow in the scales on one end and that I found the skull under a log and it was already old-"

You do your best to keep up with Aradia's rambling even though you don't understand most of it. Strider is more enraptured than you've ever seen him, and more talkative than you've ever heard. Considering how much the guy rambles endlessly every single day, that's saying something.

"Aradia wants to know if you know why antlers have fuzzy hair on them," you tell Strider as he holds up the fallen antler. Aradia is looking wide-eyed at him, examining the antler from multiple angles.

"I don't actually know. Hold on," he says, handing the antler to you and pulling out his phone. Ah, yes. Googling. He taps the screen a few times and then his eyebrows rise in recognition. "Alright, so, apparently it's called velvet, and it's made of like, skin cells and shit, so it gives them-"

He's just reading this off of Wikipedia. Wikipedia, he's told you in incredibly inane terms, is apparently some sort of huge book of all of human knowledge stored on one website (which sounds fake, but okay). Aradia, though, seems to think he's summoned the information from thin air. She looks like she just went to Disneyland for the first time. Just to be clear, in Aradia terms, that means she's smiling a little bit.

"Wait, wait, wait, let me show you something really cool," Strider says at some point, gets up and leaves the room. Aradia looks at you as if you would know what the fuck he's doing. Just as you're about to call out and ask him, he comes back in, carrying a jar in one hand and his weird scorpion in the other. He places them on the windowsill. "Behold, the crown jewels of my admittedly unimpressive collection compared to yours. Dave Strider studios proudly present: Flippy the scorpion and a fetus in a jar! Only on Blu-Ray and DVD."

Aradia takes a soft breath that could maybe be interpreted as her version of a gasp. She reaches out to touch Flippy the scorpion and brushes a fingertip very gently across the top of the material it's encased in. You're about to tell her not to touch it, as per what Strider told you earlier, but you hesitate. 

"I didn't know these were real," Aradia says. "A scorpion… Wow. Where did he find it?"

"She asks where you got Flippy," you translate.

"On the sidewalk," he says nonchalantly. You stare at him, disbelieving, and he laughs. "I'm kidding! I bought him from some dude on eBay for like eleven bucks. Kind of a sketchy deal, but the man delivered, so who am I to complain? Internet scorpion Flippy, mayor of Stridertown. Real professional, huh? Don't even know why I named him that. Just kinda felt like the right thing to do. I'd democratically elect him to lead my hometown anyday and you can quote me on that."

"It's not democratic if you're the only one who gets to pick," you say. Aradia picks up the fetus in a jar and holds it up so that the light from the living room lamp is cast through it. Strider watches the jar. You're reminded that to him, it must appear to be floating. "Is the fetus real?"

"What? Of course not. I feel like that would be illegal somehow. It's a gift from Bro that I got when I was… 11, I think. Pretty sure he just ordered it from Amazon or some weird gross Etsy store and it's just a really good replica. I'm… yeah, I'm _pretty_ sure." Despite his words, he doesn't seem entirely convinced. "I've been thinkin', kinda fucked up that I named Flippy, who's a scorpion, but never that little dude. Like, yeah, Flippy's rad, but he's not a human, y'know? Rose would probably say that it's got to do with trauma or some shit. Like 'projecting myself onto non-human beings because of a lack of parental love' or something Freudian like that."

"Rose doesn't know anything," Aradia says.

…

You see Strider’s car pull up in the driveway outside, thick sheets of rain lashing at the front window. The wipers are working overtime. You’re not surprised until you see not one, but two figures exit. One - the tall one in the driver’s seat, whom you recognize at a glance to be Strider - holds his backpack over his head to try and shield himself. The rain apparently caught him by surprise, unlike his concomitant, who is well equipped with a basic but elegant black umbrella. Though you can’t see her head from behind it, you’re pretty sure that you know who that is, too.

“Good afternoon, Karkat,” Rose says, shaking water droplets out of her umbrella when she and Strider arrive at the door. You stand from where you were sitting at the window. Strider is soaked from head to toe and desperately trying to brush off the water from his bag before it seeps in and breaks his laptop. Karma for not bringing an umbrella, motherfucker.

"Hey, Rose. Didn't know you would be coming today." You lean against the wall. Rose removes her jacket and hangs it up on the rack with careful and elegant motions, whilst Strider uses the less conventional method of shimmying his arms out of the holes and then leaving the thing on the ground. You frown, but he doesn't seem to notice, so you point at it. "Hey, pick that up, Strider. I'm not your janitor, and I'm not spending my afterlife in a pigsty, alright? We've discussed this."

Strider makes a noise of bored complaint and throws the jacket on the rack. It's draped on top now like a strange, melting lollipop. "That do anything for ya?"

"You're such a baby sometimes," you groan. "Did you get the exam results in physics? Did you pass? You better have, or I'm going to come over there myself and beat Mr. Hephaestus into the _dirt._"

Rose chuckles, close-mouthed. You and Strider both stare at her. Her eyes have a mischievous sort of glee in them. "I just think it's adorable how fussy you're being towards someone whose first name you still refuse to say out loud."

You sputter in offense. "I am not being fussy! Is it not reasonable to be pissed if a bitch-ass teacher gives a failing grade after you spend a whole weekend reviewing boring physics facts with a certain motherfucker in douchey shades? Ever hear of commitment escalation?"

"If you're trying to plead the sunk cost fallacy here, you do know it's not an excuse, right? You are still being fussy, even if you have a good psychological reason to act that way." Rose looks infuriatingly smug. If she had some sort of food, she'd be condescendingly placing it in her mouth right now. You groan and roll your eyes overdramatically. Rose smiles in that annoyingly knowing way. “You can groan all you want, you know I’m right.”

“I don’t know jack shit,” you say and immediately realize your crushing mistake. You take in a breath to correct yourself, but Strider is faster.

“You’re fucking right about that!” he yells instantly, victoriously. You start yelling creative insults about his family history and which animals he most resembles, drowning out the victorious noise he lets out.

…

“I’m afraid the experiment was something of a failure,” Rose says, leaning against the wall of the bedroom with a notepad in hand. Usually, you and Strider are on the bed while she takes the desk chair, but today she has taken the bed. Strider is strewn out in the chair. His legs are crossed and his hands rest on his lap, fingers intertwined. It’s eerily similar to the way Rose sits in that chair, actually. You’re standing behind him, leaning on the back of the chair and looking at Rose over his shoulder. She taps the paper a few times. “We discovered that only I can see Aradia, though with less clarity than I do Karkat. John and Jade cannot see either of the ghosts, but surprisingly enough, Becquerel is aware of at least Karkat, if not also Aradia. Dave, you cannot see Aradia, correct?”

“Not even a little bit,” Strider says, leaning back in his chair. “I kinda wanna talk more to her, though, so we’re going to have to figure some sort of solution to that.”

“More? You mean to say that you have spoken to her before in some manner?” Rose inquires. Strider nods.

“I guess? Karkat introduced us and we had a little show-and-tell sort of thing with our dead shit. Apparently she fuckin’ loves Flippy, which like, finally someone gets it, right? Plus she has this really cool jewel beetle-looking thing and it’s rad as shit. I think it’s a jewel beetle or something? Bugs aren’t my thing as much as arachnids and like, dino fossils and stuff. Which also seems to be the case with her, cos she had a _lot_ of bones. She’s a bone type of gal, right, Karks?”

“Oh, yeah, she won’t fucking shut up about bones,” you say. “Rose, just so you know, because one of us didn’t give you a proper answer, the conversation was mostly Strider sitting there being useless while I tried oh, so desperately to get everything Aradia had to say through those thickly wax-clogged ears of his. Pity me in my plight of having to deal with this moronic man on a daily basis.”

Rose hums, writing something down. “Interesting, but nothing we didn’t know before. I suppose the most fascinating part of that is that clearly the sharing of something personal is not always something that guarantees a ghost’s visibility. Oh, that was my hypothesis until now. After all, Dave saw you properly for the first time immediately after sharing a personal project which involved you in an essential role, correct?”

“Well, yeah, if you wanted to put it in the most needlessly verbose and insufferable way possible, you could say it like that,” you say, crossing your arms and leaning back so that you’re half-sitting on the desk. “I don’t know about Jade, though, because I haven’t really shared anything personal with her.”

“Jade?” Rose asks.

“Yeah, Jade. She didn’t see me, but she did hear me, I think. She left the fridge open and I told her about it and she said something like ‘oh, thank you, Karkat, whatever would we do without you? Living people like me are so useless and stupid and you’re our only saving grace.’ You know. Paraphrasing, but basically.”

“Oh, shut up, Karkat. You can’t even leave one lousy building, you’re not a fuckin’ god-” Strider intercepts, but is intercepted in turn by Rose.

“Jade heard you?” she asks incredulously, leaning forward with an expression of genuine surprise. “She told me she wasn’t able to tell where you were or communicate with you!”

“You think she was lying?” you ask.

“No, Jade wouldn’t straight up lie to Rose’s face like that. Plus, if she tried, I’m pretty sure we’d be able to tell like, right then and there. She’s related to John. Everyone knows the entire family tree of theirs is full of horrible liars. Like, their family tree isn’t a family tree, it’s a pair of pants that’s on fire, y’know? Like, the waistline is where John and Jade are at, ‘cause they don’t have any kids yet, and then-”

“Shut the fuck up, shithead! I swear to god, if you break out into another ridiculous hour-long ramble about some stupid metaphor you came up with, I’m going to tear this building to the ground and fly into the fucking stratosphere,” you say, slapping the palm of your hand over his mouth. He shoves you away, and you stumble through the room, exclaiming. “Motherfucker!”

“Okay, boys, play nice,” Rose says passively, only half-focusing on the two of you. Her eyes are locked on the page and her pencil is moving on its surface with the speed and intensity of an Olympic sprinter. “Dave is right, Jade wouldn’t lie about something like this. I’m going to have to talk to her about it when we see her at school tomorrow.”

“Why are you so interested in this anyway? I get that you want to understand where ghosts come from or whatever, but this seems really excessive,” you say. Rose’s mouth tightens up.

“I don’t know. It feels important. It feels like this is something I need to figure out. Do you ever get that feeling?”

Strider shakes his head as you nod empathetically. You turn to look at each other. You stare into the lenses of his shades with disappointment. “Insensitive.”

“What? She asked, and I answered!” he says. Rose laughs.

…

You review the photographs carefully, examining the patterns on the glass ceiling. Strider was right; you had no clue what the mall actually looked like until now. You guess that was to be expected, considering the only view you’ve ever had of it has been from across the town, but having to redo all the windows is a little bit tedious. At least you can ask Strider to buy you things from the crafts store now. If it still exists.

Enter Strider with a creak of the attic door. You thought he was going to shower, but there is no indication of this. He’s wearing the same clothes as he was when he left, his hair is perfectly dry, and you haven’t heard the water run since he left the room. You look him up and down. “You’ve failed to un-disgustify yourself.”

“Well, hey to you too, my man,” he says nonchalantly. “Yeah, I decided to not. I’ll shower in the mornin’ before I leave, it’s no big.”

“What are you, insane?” you say, placing the photos on tiny Prospit and turning on your heels. “Your school starts at 6.30 tomorrow - a fucking Monday morning, may I add - and you think your sleepless ass is going to have the energy to take a fucking shower before you leave? I call complete bullshit on that. Go back downstairs and cleanse yourself right this second.”

“Don’t tell me what to do, jeez,” he says rebelliously, sticking out his hip a little bit like he’s sassy or something. He is not sassy. You’ve seen untoasted pieces of white bread sassier than Strider is. You make an angry face at him and gesture to the door. His head moves in a way that can only communicate an eyeroll of astronomical proportion and he crosses his arms. You seriously feel like a suburban sitcom mother policing the comings and goings of a teenager right now. “I’ll have time! It’s alright! I’ll shower in the morning! I’m tired!”

“Your hubris will be your fucking downfall one day, and on that day you will have none of my sympathy,” you say, letting your arm drop with a shake of your head. “When the repulsive stink of your sweat drives away any and all friends you may have deluded into hanging out with you over the month you’ve been here, you will have nobody to blame but yourself.”

“Your manipulation’s not gonna get to me, Karkles,” Strider says, almost sing-song, and pulls his laptop to his lap from the bedside table he’s set up from a plank balanced on top of some cinderblocks. He’s silent for a moment, the laptop unopened on his thighs. “Do ghosts sweat?”

“What the fuck?” you ask before you even really have time to think about it. “Why would you ask that?”

“Don’t you ever wonder, though? Do you think ghosts get ticklish? Do you ever get, like, itchy randomly out of nowhere? Is that something that happens even after you die, or is it just like, a weird being alive sort of thing that doesn’t affect ghosts? Have you gotten itchy since you died, or like, really sweaty, do you remember anything like that?” he asks.

What. The fuck. You search for the words desperately, starting and stopping, rubbing your temples to collect yourself. “What kind of fucking questions are these? Holy shit! Out of anything that you could ask a ghost, why is this the thing that you have decided you should ask? Living with you is torture! I can’t believe my house is a nuthouse because of you!”

“Can ghosts sneeze?” he whispers to himself.

“Yeah! Yes! We can fucking sneeze, you have _heard me_ sneeze before! How do you not remember this?” you ask, gesturing to the bed. “I thought you didn’t care about ghost shit!”

“You kiddin’? I don’t, obviously. I couldn’t give two fucks about ghost shit, like, at all, where did you get that idea?” he says. He’s retreating into his shell of fake ambivalence.

“Bullshit,” you almost snarl and walk over to the bed. He scoots over, but it almost seems like he surprises himself by doing so. You sit down next to him. “I don’t think ghosts get itchy. I don’t remember that happening, but I haven’t really been paying attention. There’s been other shit going on, in case you somehow have not noticed.”

“Not really, no,” he says. “I thought you were overcome with boredom for 30 years. Were you ticklish when you were alive?”

Your eyes go wide as he lifts up a hand. You try to scramble away as it descends onto your side. He grabs you by the torso with his other arm and keeps you locked in this torture. “No. No no no, Strider, fuck no, don’t you fucking dare- do not- _eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh!_”

It is common knowledge that you were ticklish as fuck when you were alive.

…

December is about to arrive.

Frost forms at the edges of the windowpane. You watch it climb slowly inward, towards the center, imperceptibly. It’s on a neverending journey to a destination that seems inevitable, but still never appears to be getting closer. Like a dream where you’re trying to get to a place that seems to be getting further and further away, no matter how fast you’re traveling towards it. Like a dream where something is chasing you, gaining on you ever so slowly, but never quite reaching you. 

It’s been a while since you had any dreams.

The cold white light of the moon shines through the blossom-like patterns of frost, illuminating them, shimmering. It hits your eyes sharply. You try to blink it out, but don’t look away. It almost feels blinding. Just on the edge of that. Light is different when you’re a ghost. Your brain doesn’t seem to have registered that it’s burning into your retinas. You can still see perfectly. It feels strange. It must be two or three AM by now.

Suddenly, you hear a shuddering gasp. You sit up and look over your shoulder. You find Strider tossing and turning in his bed. He’s grasping at the blanket and the sheets, mouthing breathy, incomprehensible words. There’s a faint sheen of sweat on his forehead, and his shades are almost off his face. For once, you can see his eyes- or, at least, you can see his eyelids, scrunched tightly together as though withholding a secret. He’s had nightmares before, but usually he’s quite subdued in his sleep. You only know about them because he wakes up suddenly, shaken up, and dismisses it as a bad dream. You’ve never noticed him having them before. You’ve never seen him like this.

You feel compelled to stand and move to his side. Closer up, the jittering movements of the muscles around his mouth and his deeply creased eyebrows make you feel like you should do something. Should you wake him up? Are nightmares like sleepwalking, where waking the dreamer up is a bad idea? What should you do? Doubt makes you step back. You fiddle with your hands. You feel awkward just standing by, but you don’t know what to do.

Then, Strider jerks awake, sitting up and breathing heavily. He wraps his arms around himself, desperately seeking support. His fingers dig into the fabric of the shirt he’s sleeping in. You go to move, and he startles when he sees you. He twitches once, fast and violent, hands moving and body tensing like he’s reaching for something or preparing for some sort of assault. You just stand very still. His hands are shaking like crazy. He’s taking deep breaths. His forehead is still covered in sweat.

Slowly, you move over and sit down by his side. He draws his legs up to his torso and wraps his arms around them, though not before hurriedly correcting his shades. You didn’t see his eyes anyway. His hand is shaking almost violently as it moves. You reach over very slowly and place a hand on his knee, which is still hidden under the blanket that he was sleeping under. Though Strider flinches a little at first, he begins to relax, though only slightly.

“Nightmare?” you ask, and immediately realize how cliché and awkward that sounds. Still, his head moves to face slightly away from you. He nods, almost imperceptibly. You wait for a dozen or so seconds before continuing. “Want to talk about it?”

“No,” he whispers coarsely and shakes his head without a second thought. You don’t push it, but keep your hand on his knee. Some part of you wants to pressure him, but you know that wouldn’t be a good call. You can’t force him to talk, even if you think it would be better for him. At least not right now. He’s barely just woken up. Maybe a distraction would be better.

“Want to watch a movie?” you ask instead. Strider looks at you. His mouth his slightly ajar. It’s like he’s surprised you decided not to push it. He makes this twisted little face that looks a little bit like a smile, but mostly like he’s trying not to piss himself. It’s supposed to be a smile, though. This is one of the few things you are absolutely certain of when it comes to Strider.

“Yeah, that would be rad,” he says. His voice is still a little rough, but that can’t be helped. You reach over him to get the laptop from the bedside table and scoot next to him. He adjusts the blanket so you can both sit with your legs beneath it. There’s an inch of space between you. You can feel his radiating body heat. Even though the light of the laptop screen is harsh and cold, and the room around you is dark and lonely… for once, you feel warm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ALSO a friend of mine just posted the first chapter of his fanfic, Rise Up, and HE'S SO GOOD AT WRITING IT'S SO MYSTERIOUS AND RAD ASFJSFNSA. if you appreciate fine davekat + if you like full of dead people, odds are you're gonna like rise up so check it OUT https://archiveofourown.org/works/21707110


	8. The Saltwater Room

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey, this fic's not dead! hooray! 
> 
> in all seriousness i do plan on finishing this fic. sorry that it's been two months since the last update. this is a chapter that has been in planning for a really long time, which is why it took so long to complete. i'm really excited for y'all to see the final product >:3c

It’s Saturday morning. The sun is cold and bright, just like Strider’s room. You sit in the desk chair, hands in your lap, watching the light of winter flow in. Birds might be singing outside. You wouldn't know. The sound doesn't carry into the house, not through the insulation that still somehow stays put in that part of the roof where the tiling fell off years ago. You should fix that now that Strider is here to help you. You wonder if the external walls are still graffitied.

You swivel around in the chair. The blanket-covered shape of Strider rises and falls gently. He’s asleep. Good. You stand up, silently as you can, carrying your weight on the easily creaky floors with a hyperawareness of every sound you make. He’s a light sleeper. You phase through the door, the wood piercing through your ethereal body and making you shiver. 

You creep down the stairs through the house, chilled to the bone by the freezing air from outside that manage to partially permeate the house. Bro’s jacket is missing from its hanger in the doorway. Again, good. That means that you can do what you’ve been doing every morning for the last week or so.

See, some days back, you got tired of what a slob Bro is. Strider - exhausted from a nine-hour school day and then “practice” in a sport he is yet to reveal the name of - opened a cabinet to get cereal and damn near got his arm chopped off by a giant scimitar tumbling down at him. The thing almost killed him. Luckily, all he got was a pretty nasty cut on his shoulder. Even though he insisted it wasn’t an issue and complained when you cleaned and stitched up the wound, you knew from the shock on his face that he’d really been startled.

So you decided on a project that you should have taken up long ago. Now, whenever you see him, you stalk Bro and make a mental note of every sharp object he carelessly leaves lying around in locations that Strider’s clumsy ass is almost certainly going to stumble upon. You move swords to safer location, disarm puppets equipped with slime bombs and do other sorts of pleasantly relaxing housework. You test the doors and cabinets to make sure there aren’t any shurikens or knives in positions they could fall from. You make the house Strider-safe.

Bro has been industrious as of late. You phase through the kitchen door, noticing it's nearly closed, only ever so slightly ajar. You look up to find a bucket full of kunai set on top of the door like a deadly prank. Why the hell is that up there? You reach on your tiptoes to grab it and almost spill the thing all over the floor in your attempt. A few kunai fall out, clattering to the floor. You move them back into the bucket after setting it setting it down on the table.

Next, you go about disarming the fridge. The fridge is a disaster hotspot. There's a new hazard in there every day, without fail. Whether it's leftover Chinese food with shards of metal instead of chicken or a knife in the hinge that falls out if you open the fridge door, it's your job to make sure it doesn't murder Strider. God forbid. You wipe your fringe away from your face and get to work.

You check every container individually. You roll your shoulders and they crack loudly as you place an egg carton back on one of the shelves. You’re so focused on it that you almost don’t hear it when the kitchen door creaks. You look over your shoulder and find Strider. His Houston tourist T-shirt is a little bit off-center, revealing the left side of his collarbone. His sweatpants hang loosely off of one hip like a bad rapper. For once, his slightly ajar mouth doesn’t reveal what emotion he’s feeling. You give him a nod and return to your work.

His feet drag against the ground to your side to watch your hands move swiftly from object to object. You can feel his breath on your hair. His voice is so soft that it’s almost inaudible. “What are you doing?”

“Making the house livable,” you respond and hiss as you nick your finger on the sharp edge of a cream cheese container. You shake it off. “Your Bro is so weird. I don’t know if the fact that he seems to live on triple playback speed makes him more accident-prone than the average human or if he’s just really absent-minded, but with all the shit he leaves lying around I’m honestly kind of surprised you’re both still alive. I mean, I could excuse some mess, but like, every single cabinet? Seriously?”

“You’ve been disabling…?” Strider says. You can hear the question in his voice even though he doesn’t finish it. You turn slightly and find him still staring blankly at your hands as they slow to a stop. Whatever he’s thinking, it’s clear the gears inside of his head are turning at a breakneck speed. You’re getting exhausted just watching him. He bites his lip and breathes, and then in the blink of an eye the blank confusion turns into a tensed anger. “So that’s why.”

“That’s why what?” you ask. His eyebrows furrow as he turns to look at you.

“You can’t just disable Bro’s training exercises, dude. They’re there for a reason.” You stop in your tracks, allowing Strider to take the knife you’re holding out of your hand and put it back into the cranny where you took it from. Training exercises? There for a reason? If Strider knows these are supposed to be here… has he discussed this with- Wait.

“You’re saying this is intentional? Bro’s leaving these fucking deathtraps here on purpose for you to stumble your ass into?” you ask, suddenly regaining control of your arms again. You grab the knife that Strider took again - it's a bit of a struggle, but clearly he acknowledges that grappling with a knife is dangerous, so he lets go. You slam it on the table.

Strider shrugs. He opens the fridge - no, of course you don't miss the way his muscles in an anticipation much too familiar - and grabs a carton of OJ. As he flicks off the cap, he nonchalantly says, "yeah."

He ignores your shocked, exasperated stare. Though, by the way his shoulders shift and his mouth goes into a tight line, he does know it’s there. He sighs and pushes past you to leave the room. The pit in your stomach is deep enough to hold you still. You want to say something, to yell something, but you find yourself unable. Instead, you just stand and stare and watch him go.

…

"I don't know," you say.

A deep bass pounds from the headphones into your left ear. Strider's pre-recorded voice overlaps it in a progression of words you barely have time to understand before he's already moved in. He's sitting next to you on the bed, leaning against the wall. His hands fiddle idly in front of him. Your positions are actually not too dissimilar to the ones you were in the first time he saw you. He's clearly nervous, though he tries to hide it. A few nights ago, you sat by as he stood and rapped words to a beat only audible in his headphones. It sounded off and lonesome then, but now it's nestled in a strong and elegant beat loop in the background. 

"You've got the energy down for sure. I wouldn't have expected someone as stupid as you to be able to make something with sound quality this good. The beat is good too, but holy fuck, some of these so-called ‘rhymes’ are fucking atrocious."

“What? My rhymes are sick, what are you on? That’s the best part of the whole goddamn song,” Strider says, his nervousness swiftly being replaced with an offended expression.

“‘Appetizing’ does not fucking rhyme with ‘baby mine’ and I am disgusted that you think you would be able to get away with that shit!” you say.

"Okay, but like, doesn't it kinda sound like it does, though? And that's really all that matters." He leans back against the wall. You make a noise that signifies the imminent beginning of an angry rant. Strider grins in a way that lets you know he means none of the words leaving his mouth and is saying them for the pure and simple purpose of pissing you off. You flip him the bird and he barks a loud laugh. “Like you know so fuckin’ much about poetry, dude. This is my turf.”

“Oh, like hell it is!” you snap and reach down under the bed. The dust covering everything within a mile radius of the underside of your mattress is nasty, but underneath, everything is still familiar. You swore probably two decades ago to never ever take this thing out again, let alone show it to a single other soul on Earth, but there is not a corner of your heart you wouldn’t turn over to prove Strider wrong. Even your ass is a better poet than him. The moleskine is worn black leather. You bought it at a garage sale someone who was moving away held back in like… what, 1986? Jeez. “Here, look.”

Strider scoots over, gently moving his laptop to the other side of the bed, and leans over your shoulder to look. You open the notebook to a random page. Everything in here is so angry. Past you needs to calm his fucking tits for once in his life. Strider presses the page down to get a better look. “Dude, holy shit. Did you write this?”

“I did, yeah,” you say, trying to avert your eyes from the text in front of you and failing miserably. Damn. It feels like just yesterday you were writing this. Scribbling out angry rhymes to a beat that might not have existed even in your blood pounding in your ears. This one is like that, written in the light of your desk lamp at two in the morning when you broke down in tears and bruises ached on your face and arms. Every word is more painful to yourself. You’re cringing painfully.

Nope, you can’t do this. You wince and shove the moleskine into Strider’s arms to try and get it as far away from your person as you physically can. Strider takes it with glee and scoots backwards, reading excitedly. A part of you is telling you that he’s going to laugh at you and maybe push you to the ground or something like everybody else that’s ever seen your writing. You forcefully remind yourself that he has never done anything like that and you have no reason to think he would. _But what if he does anyway?_

Before you can spiral too far that way, Strider breaks out into a smile and flips the page. “Holy shit.”

“If your plan is to make fun of me, keep your mouth shut or I’ll tear it off,” you snap preemptively. He shakes his head.

"When'd you write this? When you were alive? Wow. You haven't changed, like, at all. That's almost impressive," he says and focuses on the page. The smirk slowly drains off his face and his mouth cracks open, eyebrows furrowing awkwardly. He doesn’t even have to say anything before panic strikes you like a viper in the jugular. You grab the moleskine from his hand - Strider jumps at this - and look at the page. 

The words on the page are sickly sweet, descriptions of a boy you knew long ago. They sink into your consciousness and hit you with a vivid memory. Sitting in the back of the classroom. Staring at a mess of black hair in the front row. Thinking about how maybe he wouldn't hate you, maybe you could change him. And he would look at you with affection instead of disgust and mockery. Thinking about how badly your sweater was ruined after he pushed you into a puddle of mud.

Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid idiot moron past Karkat- 'eyes of violet' your ass, they were brown. His eyes were brown. And you barely ever saw them because he never fucking looked at you anyway. Stupid desperate motherfucker. You don't realize how close you are to tears until Strider shifts on the bed. You startle at the movement and find him focused on you, eyebrows drawn close together. The poem is absolutely not ambiguous about what gender the person it’s about is, you realize, heart sinking. Fear fills you up, bubbling. Why did you give this to him? You were never supposed to show it to anybody! Ever! And now you remember why! You can’t look at him. He knows, he knows, he knows, he must know. Strider shifts. “Geez, it’s pretty rude to grab things from people’s hands, y’know.”

Your brain is immediately at a war between debilitating fear - is that a good response? What does that mean, what does he mean by that? - and annoyance at this moron’s antics. You can’t decide how to feel, so you opt to save face. “You’re not entitled to my work.”

That gets an only slightly forced chuckle out of Strider. “Man, I guess. Uh… I do… like your ‘work…’ I guess. It’s got, I don’t know, a flow to it? Plus there’s a lot of that, like, spoken word slash rap rhythm with a lot of this sort of alliteration stuff and all and I can respect that. Plus with the tone and creative cussing and shit like that it’s like the hottest diss track mixed this side of the century. Like slam poetry in the most literal meaning of the word. Words. Slam poetry is two words. And I guess it would be the previous century, I guess, since you weren’t alive this century. Isn’t that crazy how, like, you haven’t actually lived to see this-”

“Stop, stop!” you yell, flailing your arms at his face to stop him from talking. Your head hurts. Your neck hurts. You really don’t know how to feel. You’re dizzy and weak, as if you were on a boat rocking at open sea with this moron. You force yourself to ignore the fuzzing at the edges of your vision. Strider chuckles softly, unaware of the weak feeling in your arms, and you shove him, coughing softly. “Thanks for the insightful fucking critique. Send it to the Writer’s Digest, oh wait, nevermind, they would flay you for daring to fucking imagine that your dick-twistingly moronic rap bullshit is anywhere close to worth publishing.”

“This wasn’t even about rap, dude! It was about your poetry!” Strider shoves you back. “I’m just tryin’ to support a bro’s hobby, man, is that so wrong? Can you blame me for being so goddamn creatively talented and a born expert critic? I don’t think so.”

“Creatively talented, my powerful, rotund ass! Your raps are exclusively about-” you lower your voice and do your best “insufferable cowboy” impression- “‘sick fires’ and ‘throwing shade at the haters’ so you aren’t even taking full advantage of the inherently multituous meanings that poetry could be used for. Love! Heartbreak! Passion! Pain! You could make art about anything, absolutely fucking anything, and you choose, not just willingly but fucking enthusiastically to make this B-list crap about literally nothing!”

“Who the fuck are you to say that sick fires aren’t a perfectly valid genre? I think you’re just close-minded about what kind of art is valid. Plus, you’re one to talk about nothing but insults. Takes one to know one, I guess?”

“It’ll take one punch for me to fucking knock you out cold if you don’t shut your trap,” you snap at him. Strider huffs through his nose, as if you aren’t quite funny enough to make him laugh. You shove him. “Don’t you laugh at me! I’m about to fly off the handle in an absolutely Olympic manner and right into a seething volcano of hatred, wherein I shall surely melt until no part of my repugnant anatomy is even remotely recognizable!”

“Dude, no!” Strider says, voice breaking with amusement. “Don’t fling yourself into any volcanoes, man.”

“Fuck you. Don’t tell me what to do.” You really, really try to pretend the smile on your face isn’t there.

You don’t have to try for long. After a few moments, Strider changes the subject, and the joy falls from your face. “So, you know how December is starting?”

“Yeah, no, dipshit, I didn’t have a fucking clue,” you say flatly.

“Okay, cool, well, the more you know,” Strider says. “Anyway. It just to happens that Rose, Jade and me all have our birthdays, like, right at the start of December, like in the span of 4 days? Jade’s being December 1st, mine being December 3rd and Rose’s December 4th. But, like, me and Rose’s birthdays are weekdays, but Jade’s is on Saturday, so we decided to just party up all weekend? So… we thought we’d do this like, big slumber party sort of thing, except it’s not actually, like, big at all, ‘cos it’s just the four of us, but anyway. We’re going to take a train over to SC on Friday to, you know, catch a movie, get food, shoot the shit, you know how buddies do, and then spend the weekend at John’s house. Playin’ video games. Eatin’ pizza. Shooting the shit some more.”

As he speaks, your chest fills up with something tight and scary. You shake your head, which makes your neck spike with a sharp ache. “You’re saying you won’t be here for three days?”

“Four, counting school on Monday,” Strider says. “I get that you’re totally desperate for my hot bod to be here for your viewin’ pleasure but - ow! Ok, wow, violent. Let go of my arm. Let me talk. Anyway. My hot bod won’t be here for a couple of days. You can survive that, yeah? I mean, you were here for 30 years without me, this is just for a weekend.”

“Of course I can fucking survive for a few days without your insufferable presence in my house!” you snap at him. “I don’t need you to sit here and fucking protect me 24/7. What do I need you for? I’m my own person, you know!”

“Well, I mean, I thought maybe you’d get lonely,” Strider says. “Okay, whatevs, I just thought it would be polite to let you know that I won’t be here. But I’ll leave my laptop, so like, if something acute comes up, you could use my Pesterchum account and message John, Rose or Jade and get to me that way.”

“What the fuck kind of scenario would I need to contact you for?” you snap.

“Man, I don’t know! If you get lonely? If you’re suddenly scared of the dark and you need someone to sing you a little lullaby to make the baby kitty - that’s you, like, Kar-cat - feel a widdle bit safer in the scawy dawk night without his Davey Wavey thewe to comfowt him,” he says in a frustratingly annoying Elmer Fudds-sort of voice, clearly mocking you, and laughs when you punch him in the arm. “But for real, can’t a guy look out for his ghost bro- his… his ghost roomie?”

“Alright, whatever!” you say. “Try not to choke on your popcorn.”

Strider smiles slightly. “Will do, boss.”

…

Well, here you are again. Alone. In this same crumbling house. In the middle of winter. And Strider’s not here. You saw him off a few hours ago, made sure he had his keys, wallet and phone. He laughed at you and said you were like a helicopter mom and you cussed him out and shoved the door closed. Heard something about parental abuse as you closed the door. Then you watched him from the window as he walked down the hillside and out of your sight.

The house feels so much more claustrophobic now.

Well, you’re not exactly alone now. You were when Strider left, but that was short-lived. As the sun started to set and color the white clouds pale orange, Bro came home and started fucking everything up again. You don’t know how much of his plans Strider shared with Bro. You don’t follow Strider around all the time. He has conversations you don’t hear, especially with Bro. They seem to interact more than you know, faster and quieter than you can catch. It’s like they have a weird nonverbal language they use when you’re not looking.

So Bro is technically here as your only remaining roommate for the weekend. But he’s still Bro, so it’s not like you see much more of him than you have ever before. He sets traps and you take them down. He films weird puppet sex all over the house and you clean up after him when he’s not in the room. You get startled by him apparently teleporting in and out of rooms as he pleases. Most of the time, you don’t see him or know where he is, and you’re honestly fine with that.

You’re on Strider’s bed. It’s the middle of the night. You’re staring at the ceiling, and at the trap door that leads to the rooftop. The wood of the ceiling planks is fraying all around. Not enough to be dangerous or worth replacing, not yet, but just enough to make you feel a little bit unsafe. What’s going to happen to you when the house inevitably collapses? What if Strider is here when it does, and he gets crushed and dies? He has friends. He has a place to go. If he died, he wouldn’t stay here. You’d be alone again. Well, you’d still have Aradia, but you wouldn’t have Strider, you’d never see him again.

Why the fuck are you tearing up? What the fuck? You wipe your eyes and nose and cough harshly to get the weird goopy feeling from your throat. Like Strider said, you lived here for three decades without him, and he’s only open for interaction with you for a fraction of each day. He’s got school and, unlike you, he sleeps. You’re stuck cleaning and reorganizing all night every day anyway, so why are you getting like this now?

You are so truly stuck here. Strider is away because he’s celebrating his birthday. Getting older. One day, Strider’s going to die. He’s going to grow old. Probably move away from here, to a place that’s better, as soon as he can, like you were going to do when you were alive. And you’re just going to be stuck here, left behind, fading away for all eternity. Eventually, he’s going to forget you. Just like everyone else forgot.

You turn over to your side and wrap yourself in his blanket. It’s cold and unfriendly, but… it’s soft, at least. Ghosts don’t need to sleep- well. Ghosts don’t get to sleep. That’s true. You’re forced to live in a constant near-dreamlike state of pain and loneliness forever. But you can get tired. Aradia, after a long day of trekking through the woods or using her supernatural ghost powers to help dying animals or whatever altruistic shit she’s getting up to, would come to you exhausted and lie down on the ground for hours. 

She’s not asleep when she does that. That would be way too pleasant and easy. She just lies there, staring at the sky, too tired to move, until she feels a little better and can haul herself up. It’s almost like you’re so exhausted that your body remembers you’re supposed to be dead, and so it tries its best to die, but it can’t. You don’t experience it that often. Sometimes you get tired, obviously, especially if you’ve worked particularly hard, but Aradia has it worse than you. Maybe it’s because she still has the body of a six-year-old, maybe it’s because she’s so much older and more faded than you. Who knows.

You try to slip away, staring at the wall. The wood has long since started to chip away. You wish you could renovate this place and make it feel like the home you remember. Or the home Strider had in Texas. You think he misses Texas. Sure, he didn’t have friends there, but he grew up there. His mother was there. And besides, anything is an upgrade from Prospit, Ohio.

…

God.

Damnit.

You are so.

Fucking.

Bored!

You whack your head against the wall a few times. Pain strikes your neck with every whack. You groan a sigh and drop down onto the bed. Your head hangs off the edge of it and your neck, again, unhelpfully reminds you that it’s broken. So fucking inconvenient. What the fuck do people do when they’re this bored?

You glance out the window. The sun is barely up. You groan. Being a ghost sucks.

…

“Aradia!” you yell out the kitchen window. You wait for maybe a dozen seconds. No response. “Aradia!”

...Still no response. You slump against the countertop and groan against its cold, hard surface. After a few minutes, though, when you lift you head, you see her at the edge of the woods, coming down towards you. Everything else looks so big compared to her in her little brown gown. She really does look like an orphaned deer. Aradia is just Bambi, but more depressed. Bambi, if the movie ended after the scene where his mom dies.

She skids down the frosty grass of the hillside. Autumn leaves fall to the sides of her bare feet. She’s panting - or, at least, the ghost equivalent of that - as she comes to a stop some feet away from the wall, struggling to maintain her balance. “Hello! Sorry for delaying. I had, uh… I was at a house.”

“You were at a house?” you ask, incredulous. Aradia nods. You scoff. “What are you, like a stray cat with a second home away from here?”

“Oh, no, I mean like a treehouse,” she specifies. “There’s this treehouse in the woods that was built… eh… I think you were dead when they built it. It was… these three kids? Well, later it was… maybe five or six kids, I think? I don’t remember. Anyway, they stopped using it a while back, so I started keeping stuff in it. I thought they probably wouldn’t mind. And I was up in the branches and it took me a little bit to get down.”

“Oh, alright.”

“So what was it that you wanted?” she asks, sitting down in the grass. It’s covered in frost. That can’t be comfortable.

“Oh. Uh, nothing. I was just bored, so I thought we could hang out.” You feel a little bit awkward now, brushing a loose strand of hair behind your ear. Aradia nods, eyebrows furrowed.

“Where’s Dave? Does he have school today?” she asks, tilting her head like a curious owl. You shake your head.

“No, it’s Saturday today. He’s out with friends. It’s his birthday this weekend, and Rose’s. And Jade’s. John’s tagging along too, I think. They’re going to the movies, playing video games. All that shit. You know, alive stuff. Fun stuff.” You sigh, carding a hand through your hair. Aradia hums melancholically. You look at her and find her eyes sad. You huff. “But what does that matter? Can’t I just spend time with you regardless of what Strider is up to?”

Aradia’s shoulders drop a little and she smiles in that empty way that makes you feel worse than if she hadn’t smiled at all. “No, I understand. Dave is your age. I’m little and bland.”

“Aradia, you’re not bland. Besides, you’re right, you’re a kid. All the more reason that I should hang out with you more than I do. I know that ever since Strider came around, we’ve talked less, but I don’t like you any less, alright? I’ve known you for 30 years. You’re like my sister now.” You’re really desperately trying to get your feelings out of your brain. If you made Aradia feel like she’s worth less, you are a shitbag. “I wish we could do all the stuff we used to do, but we… can’t. Not with Bro here, anyway.”

“Bro’s stupid,” Aradia says. She kicks a tiny rock, which tumbles down the hillside. “I said I liked this fake blood, but turns out he’s just stupid like grown-ups.”

You laugh, coughing into the crook of your arm. “You know what? Fuck Bro. Who cares about him. Let’s play Blackjack.”

Aradia looks up. “With animal bones?”

“Yeah, sure. I hope I still remember which one is which,” you sigh. Aradia gets up and dusts herself off.

…

Dawn of the third day without Strider. You’ve begun a rivalry with Bro. He put a doofy smuppet with horrifying eyes on the table in the hallway. You shoved it off. When you walked by again, it was there again. You took it and shoved it into the glove drawer. You passed by again an hour or two later and, lo and behold, Shithead McGee was back on the table. A little crumpled up, but nonetheless. You threw it out of the back door. After 20 minutes or so, Bro came out of his room, saw that Shithead was missing, puzzled over the situation for a while and then went out to fetch it from the muddy ground.

Apparently the mud was just the accessory Shithead needed, because Bro didn’t even bother to clean the damn thing up.

It’s been going on for almost a full day now. You’ve camped out in the kitchen. From here, you can see Shithead’s usual spot. If Bro finds him and brings him back, you can get him immediately and put him somewhere even better hidden. There must be some hiding spot Bro won’t find him.

Some part of you warns you that this is getting dangerously close to letting Bro in on the fact that you’re here, but this is personal now. This is war. It’s about principle.

…

You’ve lost. You’ve given up. No matter where you put Shithead, Bro finds him. You can’t run. You can’t hide. Shithead’s disgusting, crumpled up, muddy, toilet water-covered, nasty visage is absolutely inescapable. And Bro doesn’t even seem inconvenienced. Granted, he doesn’t seem like anything at all. The guy is a riddle wrapped in a mystery wrapped in a fullbody Kermit suit. This is like those fucking rats all over again.

You can’t believe you’re saying this, but you really miss Strider.

…

Tick.

You realized there’s a clock on the living room wall now. You’ve decided to lie down on the couch and stare at the seconds go by until Strider comes home or you completely disintegrate, whichever happens first.

Tock.

It’s probably two or three AM on Monday. Meaning he won’t be home for another fourteen or so hours. You have nothing to do but wait.

Tick.

You wonder what Aradia is up to. Probably exploring. Playing in that treehouse you didn’t know about. You don’t know what she does all day out there. Maybe nothing. Maybe she just fucks around like you do. And you’d think that that was selfish, but you wouldn’t want to hang around this house either. Besides, you’re not fun enough to entertain a depressed 6-year-old.

Tock.

…

It’s four. Four PM. He should be home, he should be here by now, shouldn’t he? School’s out. How long does it take to walk from the school to your house? Fifteen minutes? Half an hour? It can’t be half an hour. It’s been so long. You knew this for the longest time, you knew every shortcut to get home as fast as you could. Sixteen minutes? Or was it twenty-six? Or eighteen? Twenty-one? 21.8? You pace back and forth in front of the window. Any second now. Any second.

Bro’s not home. He left in the morning for something with a big suitcase full of smuppets. Probably one of his… performances. You’ve heard he has those, though thankfully Strider was vague about the details of what happens in them. You’re not sure he knows, himself. Shithead McGee stares at you from the table, nasty as ever. You flip it off. You’re not anxious. You’re not fussing! You’re just bored. That’s right, bored, and the only reason you need Strider around is to make sure your existence isn’t gray and sucky. You mean, not that he makes your existence less sucky with his douchebag shades. It’s just that… it’s… mildly entertaining to watch him suck so much. Yeah, that’s it.

The door clicks open and Strider enters, backpack slung over his shoulder. He looks pretty much the same as when he left, except greasier, and he has a huge muddy patch on the knee of his jeans. He waves at you casually, but you know what the nervous hunch in his shoulders means.

“Bro’s not home,” you say. Strider immediately straightens his back. You groan. “Do you fucking understand how agonizingly boring existence in this tiny fucking house is when there isn’t a piece of shit like you to laugh and/or cringe at? It’s depressing, that’s what it is! Somehow even more so than having to watch your nasty ass drag your brain from room to room in a pathetic attempt to keep you alive long enough to trick some poor being into reproducing with you and then hopefully shriveling up into ash immediately afterwards! And what happened to your jeans?”

“Honey, I’m home,” Strider says at a high-pitched, quiet voice, like he’s mocking you. He tosses his backpack onto the ground. “Great to see you too, Karkles. I fell on the hill when I was coming up, ‘cos it was wet and slippery and all. Also, yeah, I did have fun with my friends, thanks for asking.”

“Fuck you,” you say flatly. “I can’t believe you wouldn’t even consider giving any sympathy to the poor ghost that you abandoned all alone.”

“Oh, come on, man. I wasn’t gone for that long. You could’ve left a book, or… I mean. I left you my laptop. You could’ve used that. Gone on the line as y’all said in the 80s. Troll some forums, watch some, like, cooking videos or something, I feel like you’d be into that sort of thing. I mean, maybe you wouldn’t? Oh, did you have like an Easy Bake Oven or something like that as a kid? Did Easy Bake Ovens exist when you were a kid?”

“Yes, we fucking had Easy Bake Ovens when I was a kid! I didn’t, though, because of my fucking uncle! Remember him?” you snap. “All the toys I had was my VHS and Tiny Prospit.”

“Well, still, though.”

You sigh. “Okay, fine. You’re right. I could’ve used your laptop. I feel dumb now.”

Strider pats you on the back way too hard. “Shit happens. Doesn’t matter that much, as long as you stop yelling at me for not having an entertaining enough house. I guess we have some gaming to catch up on.” 

As he rolls his shoulders and slips his jacket off, he seems to notice Shithead or whatever the nasty smuppet’s name was sitting on the hallway table.

“Oh, what the fuck went down with that poor thing?” he says, pointing at it. You huff.

“Eh. Nothing. Bro and I had kind of a war over it.”

“Oh, what? Holy shit, this is a story I’ve got to hear,” Strider says gleefully. You open your mouth to tell him that it really wasn’t that interesting, but he’s already halfway to the attic. “You can tell me while we play. Come on. I’m going to beat your ass at Mortal Kombat.”

“You will absolutely not!” you say and follow him up the stairs.

…

Later that night, you and Strider are downstairs. The sun has long since set. It’s probably past midnight by now. You’ve been hanging out all night. Playing video games. Watching movies. Listening to music. You’re surprised Strider isn’t tired of your presence yet. You’re surprised _you’re_ not tired.

You came downstairs when Strider had to use the bathroom and fetch snacks, and you thought you’d speed up the process by going to the kitchen while he was pissing. This didn’t work, because turns out Bro decided that this would be the exact right time to have an apparently extremely serious phone call right in the kitchen. You peer in from the doorway. His voice is too quiet to hear. The call ends and Bro takes a deep breath. His eyebrows are ever so slightly lower than usual, so it must be serious.

The bathroom door creaks as Strider exits. He gives you a quick confused glance as he notices you’re standing in the doorway without any snacks. This only lasts for a second, though, as moments later Bro looks up. He’s staring exactly at you, and even though you know he can’t see you, you’re struck with momentary panic. You move back out of his line of sight when he opens his mouth. “Dave.”

“Yeah?” Strider says somewhat fearfully. He moves past you and into the kitchen. You try your best to peer over his shoulder at Bro, though it’s not that successful. You are very small compared to Strider. But that doesn’t stop you from hearing Bro’s words. Each one fills your stomach with a new kind of dread.

“So, basically, just got a call from a hospital down south. Your mom died an hour or so ago.” Strider tenses up, but it doesn’t stop Bro from speaking. His voice is flat and near-emotionless, though he takes a few pauses, seemingly to consider his words. “Pretty sure she left you a lot of stuff. Guy on the phone didn’t tell me much. They’ll probably contact me tomorrow. Anyway. Thought you should know.”

Thought he should know? Anger and shock bubble in your chest. They’re quickly joined by fear. Especially when you look at Strider and find him more uncertain than you’ve ever seen him. His eyebrows are drawn down sharply and his mouth is ajar. The dark, heavy, painful feelings kick up. You have to blink back tears. The air is still and thick, like all the oxygen had suddenly been replaced with syrup. You move closer and he jumps just a little, like he forgot you were there. His mouth quickly snaps into a line. The waver in his voice, though he tries to hide it, betrays his emotions better than anything else. 

“Yeah. Cool. I guess. Thanks… for telling me.” He’s really struggling to keep it together. You’re a little bit surprised by how heavy your legs feel. You come to stand at Strider’s side. He glances at you very quickly and steps back from the doorway. His hands have been aggressively shoved into the pockets of his jeans, maybe to try and reconcile the way his shoulders are about as tensed as a brick. He takes a few harsh breaths. “Alright. I’m going now. Bye.”

Without a second glance at you or Bro, he brushes past you and rushes down the hallway. You watch him disappear up the stairs. In the kitchen, Bro relaxes on the table and shakes his head. He’s unreadable now, walls back up after that moment of… well, you can’t really call it a moment of vulnerability. Strider was the only vulnerable one. You turn your back and go to the attic.

“Strider?” you ask as you creak open the attic door. The blanket is gone from the bed. The laptop has been moved to the desk, the lid closed and the movie it harbored long since forgotten. Most notably, the latch to the rooftop is open. The rope ladder hangs down on the bed. Navy sky dotted by pale stars shines as a sliver from the hole in the ceiling.

You climb up the ladder, pulling your weight up with practiced motion. The winter wind is sorely cold on your neck where it slips onto your skin between your hair and turtleneck. You shiver down to your hips as you draw yourself onto the cold tiling. Sure enough, wrapped in a blanket, Strider sits on the shingles. You drag yourself over and sit down next to him in the fetal position. With your hands snug in each other’s sleeves, you’re at least not that acutely cold. Lucky you died in a sweater, you guess.

“Hey.” It feels kind of wrong for your voice to be as soft as you allow it to be. It’s not that it takes conscious effort to relax your throat, it’s more… you suppose you’ve just always been used to talking rough and loud. You think Strider, too, is a little surprised at the sound of your speech. He turns to look at you with his eyebrows lifted slightly, then looks away and pretends his sniffle was a cough.

“Yo,” he responds. His voice is stuffy and kind of disgusting. He turns back to face you, and apparently doesn’t like what he sees. The sigh he lets out is rough, the sound equivalent of self-doubt. He stares at the ground in the distance. “Stop looking at me like I’m a kicked puppy. I’m fine.”

“Strider, if you honest to fuck think I believe that you’re fine right now, you are even dumber than I could ever have imagined,” you tell him. Strider frowns. You pause, watching the cold light of the moon, partially covered, illuminate his profile. He looks dulled out in this light, gray and ghostly, just like Aradia does in the wintertime when her sadness is at its worst. It’s pitiful, but you can’t fathom why your head hurts with such intensity, why your own eyes almost water at the sight of him like this. He looks like a hobo in his stupid card suit blanket. His breath comes out in thick, cloudy puffs that dissolve into the night.

You turn away and stare into the distance with him. The trees around you and across the town are nearly, if not completely barren by now. Frost has formed on every surface. The grass is shimmery from the ice. It’s beautiful, but it looks fake. It looks like it shouldn’t really be there. A cold breeze pushes through and makes you shiver. Goosebumps. The darkness of the night settles like a heavy blanket. You choose not to say anything.

“...Y’know, it’s weird,” Strider says after a long, long moment of silence. “Back in Texas, I hated going to the rooftop. It was… I mean… the sun was so hot. It was so stressful. I was always covered in sweat and exhausted, even in the winter. Houston fucking sucks in that regard, like, the whole city is covered 24/7, 365 in this shitty, grimy heat that makes life there fucking nasty. And then I come here and chill with a ghost for a couple of months and…”

Strider laughs breathlessly.

“...now I hear that my mom’s dead and the first place I go is the roof.”

He breathes for a moment in silence. You lean against your arms and look at him. He’s usually so lanky. He could almost be intimidating, like his Bro is. But here, like this... wrapped in a blanket, cheeks flushed, staring up at the sky. He looks strangely soft. Vulnerable. Like a raggedy old stuffed animal someone left on the side of a street. Like… what was it he said? Like a kicked puppy.

“I’m really sorry,” you finally settle on, breaking the silence again. Strider looks to you. You hesitate. “I didn’t know your mom, obviously, but… I know you really missed her. Like, I know you put up this front that you’re unreadable, but I can tell you miss Texas, or at least missed it at some point. I have eyes that work.”

“Mm.” Strider twirls his finger in the sheets of his blanket. These pauses in conversation are getting a little bit boring. Usually you’re all for Strider shutting up, but you wish he would tell you what’s on his mind. Then he does. “I did miss Texas. I don’t miss it as bad anymore. Like, yeah, Prospit kind of sucks big ass, but Houston was just as much of a hellhole. Plus, if I didn’t move here, I wouldn’t have met John, Rose or Jade. Or you.”

He looks at you for just a moment. You can’t know for sure, but in that moment, you think your eyes meet. Then he looks away again like he suddenly got shy.

“And I missed Mom. I still miss Mom. Like… a lot. She always felt, like… safe. Even though she was a crazy alcoholic and probably a shitty mom, I still felt like… she was my mom, y’know? She gave a shit, even if just a little turd nugget, about if I was okay or not. Not a lot of people… y’know… do that.”

“I know what that’s like,” you say, and immediately regret it. Fucker, Vantas, making it all about yourself again. Shut your trap and let him greave without butting in every few seconds. Piece of shit. You sigh and rub one eye to try and get a little bit of that eternal tiredness out. You turn and find Strider staring at the stars that peer out through the cotton clouds. Their light is reflected in pale freckles on the lenses of his shades.

“There was this science festival in Houston every year,” he starts. His voice is trembling so much it’s probably a 9 on the Richter scale. “Mom used to take me there when I was a kid. Back when she wasn’t quite as fucked up all day every day. Like, she was still a massive drunk, but like, she was a person, y’know? They always had these crazy weird exhibits and it was the shit. There was a dinosaur exhibit one year, I think I was, like… six? And they had these rad fossils, but it wasn’t just that, they also had, like, preserved shit in jars. Another year the theme was ancient Egypt and there was a mummy exhibit and it was the coolest thing. I’m pretty sure there was an age restriction on that, ‘cos all the embalming stuff was super graphic and I don’t think I was supposed to see it, but Mom was drunk, so she didn’t care. Anyway, it was fucking awesome, ten out of ten, would go look at mummies at Houston Science Expo again.”

“Thrilling,” you say into the fabric of your jeans. Strider looks away wistfully for a few long moments. 

“Sometimes it feels like I should’ve been able to change it somehow,” he says, so quietly that you’re not sure if you were supposed to hear. “Like, if it was my responsibility to stop her from drinking. Would I still have a mom if I’d done something differently, y’know? When she showed up drunk to the custody thing, I thought… if she wanted to be my mom at all.”

Then his face breaks and he chokes. You’re immediately alert, but he turns away and wipes at his eyes under the shades.

“Fuck,” he says very quietly. “Sorry.”

“You don’t have anything to apologize for,” you say. He sniffles and doesn’t look at you. You scoot closer and put a hand on his back. Immediately, he flinches slightly, and looks at you again. There are tear streams going down his cheeks. You try to make a face that’s comforting. You’re not sure it comes off that way. Strider wipes his nose and looks down.

“I shouldn’t be crying,” he says. 

“You have every right to cry. Your mom died,” you remind him. Strider sighs and nods.

You stay on the roof for a very long time. He cries into his sleeve and doesn’t look at you for most of that time. You think he’s attempting to pretend that he’s not crying, but if he is, he’s failing. You keep your hand on his back. He hasn’t told you to remove it.

Then, eventually, he makes an amused, wet noise. “You know… I’m glad it’s you that’s here and not Rose. She would say I have a mommy kink.”

You scoff and slap him upside the head. He laughs, nose clogged.

…

Warm light fills the hallway as a stark contrast to the cold morning air. Strider dons his jacket and backpack, ready for school. You really hope that he’ll be fine while he’s out. The news has been taking a toll on him for the past few days. You’re not sure he’s told his friends yet. A part of you wonders if he would have told you, had you not been there to hear the news firsthand. Maybe. He probably couldn’t have hidden it for long.

“Listen, it’s not my fault that you slobber all over Hugh Grant’s gaunt face. He’s old, Karkles, perdonne fuckin’ moi for thinking it’s weird,” Strider says. He’s joking about you slobbering over Hugh Grant. You think. As he opens the door and slips into his shoes, he turns on his heels, interrupting your prepared tsunami of insults. “Oh, by the way, I left something for you in the attic. I didn’t have time to show you before. I think you’ll like it. Try not to bust a nut too hard when you see it, yeah?”

“I will bust your skull, motherfucker,” you snarl half-heartedly.

“I think you’ll find my skull as unbustable as your nut,” he says.

"Go fuck a monkey, pissdick," you yell. He flips you off from the crack between door and frame, then disappears with a click. Bastard. You shake your head to yourself. Still, the attic door is calling to you. Curiosity gnaws at you. Whatever it is that he left you, he must have dropped it off only moments ago, while you were having a morning chat with Aradia in the kitchen. The stairs creak under your feet. 

Of course, it’s entirely possible he left you a gag gift of some sort. Something as infuriating as him, like maybe a horror movie about ghosts or something. You enter the attic. The first thing you notice is Strider’s laptop on his bed. That’s not good. Isn’t he going to need that at school? Not that you would have when you were alive, but obviously you don’t know what school is like nowadays. Laptops didn’t even exist in your lifetime, and Strider has been using it for everything school-related ever since he got here, and he’s never left for school without it. 

As you approach, you see that there’s a piece of paper on the keyboard. The program open on the laptop’s screen is a video player, by the looks of it. There is a timeline for the video that’s open at the bottom, marking that the video is at its very beginning. Beyond that, the screen is black. Strider’s handwriting is scrawled onto the piece of paper.

hey bro thought youd wanna know what was on the vhs yea im a miracle worker dont worry about it also yea i watched the whole thing but im no snitch you know me im trusty like a hot tamale that rhymes i think if you say it right also maybe its trustworthy not trusty but like idc im also trusty like the hammer thats been used for like three decades i was there when you made your patio karks how could you just abandon me in the shed for years i thought we had something? something about hammering me haha what if i got hammered this is just a well stocked toolshed of puns anyway this note wasnt meant to be this long enjoy your dirty tape

dave

Wow. Eloquent as ever.

So this is the tape you two found under the bed? You saw Strider take it after you finished cleaning, but you didn’t know what he did with it. You also didn’t know laptops could play VHS tapes. It’s not hooked up to a player or anything. You’ll have to ask him about it later. You brush the paper away and tap the spacebar key.

The blackness of the video crackles at the edges as the timeline fades from view. Then the janky footage begins. The video is old and you can barely tell what’s even going on. There’s a mirror, and a figure brushing long, messy hair. The camera approaches her and she turns around. Her eyes are feminine and cat-like and her hair is thick, long and frizzy. She has a small nose and a thin, long face. You squint at the screen. She looks familiar.

The surprise on her face morphs to a wild smile - not at the camera, but at whoever is filming. She practically leaps at the lens. There’s no audio. You wonder if there’s supposed to be. The camera is directed towards the mirror the woman was looking into, and you see the person filming. You stare in shock. Even with the bad image quality, you can tell he looks like you. He’s more a bit chiseled, much taller, and has actual facial hair, but still. He has the same wide, downturned eyes and long lashes as you, and the same coarse, messy hair.

You remember now where you recognize them from. From rare photographs you found in the basement. From photo albums that you weren’t allowed to look at. Your parents! Your mother is in a loose-fitting dress that looks too big for her long, thin frame. Your dad is in a sweater that would look strikingly similar to the one you’re in, if not for the genuinely ugly patterning on it. They smile at the mirror, which reflects the light of the camera so much that the two of them are barely visible on the screen. Your father notices something out of frame, and reaches to turn the camera off.

The video cuts. Now it’s in a living room- the living room of your house. In the same chair you remember from when you were alive is a tall woman with short, wavy hair. She looks quite old, with reading glasses on her face, knitting. She looks up at the camera and makes a knowing smirk before shaking her head dismissively. Her mouth moves around words you can’t hear. You realize, then, who that is. You’ve seen her in photos before- your dad’s mom. Your grandmother. The camera trembles for a moment. It shifts up and to the side, to the sofa, where two people are sitting. 

One is a man you’ve also only seen in photographs. He has huge glasses with lenses so reflective you can’t see his eyes on the video. He’s tall and skinny, like your mother, and dressed in a sweater that somehow looks too small. He grins crookedly at the camera and waves. Psi, you think he’s called. Cy? Si? You’re not sure. You know he was a close friend of your parents’. 

Next to him is a man in a white sweatshirt. He’s got a scraggly beard and paler skin than anybody else on the video. At first, you think he’s as much of a stranger to you as Psi was, but as the camera moves closer, you realize you recognize the thin frame of his face, his small, wide-set eyes and his bony cheeks. A lump forms in your throat and you suddenly feel like you’re about to collapse. It’s him. You’ve been trying not to think about his face for 30 years, and there he is, looking younger and happier than he ever was when you were alive. He doesn’t deserve to look this happy.

The video cuts again, to your father in a dark gray-brown tuxedo. It looks used. He’s grinning stupidly at the camera and laughing. He reaches at the lens and the video cuts again, to your mother on an altar in a gorgeous wedding dress with a long, flowing silk veil hanging from her head. She’s being held in a bridal carry by your dad in the same hand-me-down suit. Psi stands next to them, clapping. Everyone is grinning widely, and he leans down and kisses her. The camera shakes for a moment, and then, without a pause to let you breathe, a new clip starts.

The colors of the room are faded and warm, like the dawn in a room with beige curtains. There’s a hospital bed where your mother is sleeping, hair messed up and drool rolling down the side of her mouth. Next to it, two chairs. In one of them, your grandmother, leaning over. She’s really tall and thin. You didn’t get the tall genes that all of your other family members seem to have. Or the thin genes.

She’s leaning over your dad’s shoulder- he’s in the other chair. He looks happy, tired, and embarrassed all in one, rocking back and forth gently, holding… something. He looks up at the camera, surprised at its presence, and says something slowly. The camera pans in closer as he holds the bundle in his arms up slightly. Oh.

It’s a baby. A really, really small, extremely pink baby. It looks like a strange little alien, the thing, and there’s tubes coming out of its nose, hooked up to a machine behind your dad. Tiny creature. You can’t believe that people actually get those intentionally. Are all babies that tiny and pathetic or is this one a special case? ...Wait. Hold on. You’re an only child. So that baby that your dad is holding must be… 

Oh, fuck. That’s you? Did Strider say he watched this whole thing? Oh, fuck. This is embarrassing. Can you watch this? You didn’t know you would be appearing on film. Baby you is shifting on the film, like he knows he’s being filmed and he’s already camera shy. Your dad and grandma laugh. Your dad’s leg is bobbing up and down and he’s holding you like a fragile diamond. 

You’re tearing up. Fuck, fucking pathetic. You wipe away wetness from the corner of your eyes. You’re going to fucking kill Strider for developing this thing for you. God, he did that. He got this for you. Not for any weird sense of entitlement to your family history. He knew as little about what was on here as you did. Why does that make you feel just as much as watching your dad hold you on the video?

One more cut. It’s baby you, again, though significantly older, larger and less pink. You’re in a stupid little striped baby jumpsuit, alternating red, white and black stripes. There’s a tuft of black hair on your head, and on your face, a goofy baby-smile. Your uncle is there, leaning over you. You shift, rubbing at your own hands nervously, but all he’s doing is playing peek-a-boo. Evidently you’re loving it, because baby you looks to be babbling and reaching up with his tiny baby arms, like he’s trying to grab your uncle’s nose and rip it off.

The camera bobs as it comes closer. Your uncle looks up, grinning, and the pit in your stomach sinks lower and darker. Your hands are beginning to tremble against your will. You’re not sure you can watch this. Still, you continue to. You’re not sure why. Some part of you just feels like you need to see this through. Your uncle picks you up and holds you to himself. Your baby self yawns and tucks his head in the crook of his arm. You look content in his arms, and he looks happy to hold you. Your uncle looks at the camera and laughs, and then the video ends.

You sit there for a long while, staring at the laptop screen after it goes black. So much is going on in your head, and you’re not sure where to start with it. It’s like your brain is a sludge of sewer water that comes up to your waist, riddled with the debris of a flash flood, and now you have to wade your way through it. You bring a hand up to your head and rub at your face and temples, shaking your head absent-mindedly.

That was you, as a baby. And your uncle, holding you, smiling. It just doesn’t compute. He doesn’t love you, he never did. You weren’t happy when he was around. You were content to be held by him, he played with you and cared about you and spent time with your family, and you had a home that was safe to be in.

Why was… you were… what changed? Why couldn’t you have that anymore, that world that you had in the video? 

Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it, Vantas? You know the reason. Your parents died when you were less than two years old. Clearly everything is because of that, all that you suffered was because they weren’t there. How could they die like that and leave you alone? It wasn’t their fault, obviously, you know that it was an accident that took their lives, but if you could just… if they had just… 

...They were so happy, too, on the video. Getting married, always smiling, laughing, looking so grateful that they got to have each other. That they got to have you in their lives. You sob and lean against the wall. It’s so fucking unfair. You want that life. Teased with happiness for the first few years, a perfect life, then to have it ripped from you like that. Just your fucking luck. 

This sucks. Everything fucking sucks.

You wander downstairs in a haze, and through the hallway. Your head and neck ache, weak coughs shaking you like a flimsy, barren birch in the wind. You drag your sorry ass into the kitchen and onto one of the chairs. You’ll just wait, you suppose. For something. Strider to come home. Double Death to finally take your ass. It’s waited long enough.

There’s a knock at the window that gets your attention. It’s Aradia, standing behind the glass. She gives you a wave, looking distantly curious as always. You heave a sigh, neck creaking, and heave yourself up. The window creaks as you slide it open. You’re lucky Bro’s not home. Aradia blinks slowly at you with an owlish look on her face. “You look emotional.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” you grumble, rubbing at your eyes. “Strider… got me something. It was nothing, alright? It was normal. This is normal.”

“I didn’t say that it wasn’t,” Aradia intercepts. “What was the normal thing?”

“It’s not important! It’s so fine and unimportant that it is completely irrelevant what the fucking normal thing was!” you say, defensive. Aradia shrugs. There’s a sweet moment of silence. You bite your lip. “Aradia.”

Aradia hums, questioning. You open your mouth to speak, but hesitate. Are you really going to fucking dump your shit all over this ghost child that already seems really depressed? But then, she’s been depressed for a hundred years, and you only have some 40 years of that experience. God, you really need an actual toddler’s mental health advice?

“Have you ever wished that you had a family? I know you had a brother back in the day, but… a real family. Like, a normal family.”

Aradia shifts, thinking. There’s another moment of silence, dragging on for so long that you’re about to withdraw your question, before she responds. 

“That’s… well, kind of, in a way. I don’t really know what a real family is like. You mean like a mother and a father and a house and all that?” The way she looks at you, wide-eyed, is enough to tug at the heartstrings. You consider it and nod. Aradia thinks for a moment longer. “I don’t really know. I don’t think I lived for long enough to see the merit in that. It’s been really, really long since I lived, so I only really have the woods anymore. But I know that I’ve seen lots of other kids in the woods. They always have friends with them, and they always seem to smile and laugh and it seems like they all feel really good, being with each other. Nobody that has met me has ever been that happy with me.”

She stares at the counter, toying with the chipping paint on the windowsill. Her voice is little more than a breathy hush that gets carried away in the morning breeze. Poor thing. You hum and put your forehead against the glass. “Being a ghost sucks.”

“It does.” Aradia sniffles. “Why are you asking me?”

“Well…” you, again, find yourself at a bit of a conversational wall. You’re going to have to spill the beans if you want to keep this feelings jam going. Aradia’s puppy eyes aren’t making it easier to be the cool older brother you wish you were to her. “You know how Strider’s mom died recently? ...Well… he always really seemed to miss and love her. She wasn’t a great mom, on an objective basis, but she cared about him, and I think that was really important to him. I wish I could have had that.”

Aradia nods. Silence settles. She narrows her eyes. “That’s not all, is it?”

Your mouth tightens into a line almost on its own. “Alright, fine, it’s not. It’s not all. Strider also got me this… he got me a VHS tape that my parents made after I was born. On that tape, there were… videos of me when I was a baby. And it just seems like everything was so much better then. My uncle wasn’t a piece of shit, my parents weren’t dead, I wasn’t a pathetic ghost stuck in his house with nothing but two men in moronic sunglasses and a 6-year-old Victorian girl for company. It fucking… it sucks! Everything sucks, and I don’t understand why it had to be me that went through all of this hell for no reason! I wish that I could have lived the life that it looked like I was going to, instead of the life that I did, and maybe then I wouldn’t have died at 17! I don’t know what I did wrong to deserve this!”

You’re almost gasping for breath by the end of your tirade. Aradia nods again, coughing into the back of her hand. She doesn’t meet your eyes. You sink into the kitchen counter and cradle your head in your hands. When Aradia speaks, her voice carries more weight than it has before. “After I died, I couldn’t feel anything for a while. I just remember that I was cold and that the world was all gray and white and empty and dark. I just… walked around. Then at some point, I went to the other edge of the woods, and there was a boy there. He was just kind of relaxing against a rock, but he looked very scared. I went to talk to him, because… before that, I hadn’t seen anybody at all.”

You look up. Aradia is staring intently at the wood frame of the window as she speaks.

“I wasn’t really sure how anything worked yet. I didn’t really know how I was still there. I don’t know what I was expecting. But he saw me, and I noticed that he was all faded and pale. I sat down next to him and we talked about a lot of things. He told me that he couldn’t walk because his legs didn’t work at all. I tried to help him stand, but he couldn’t, and I don’t think it was because his legs were mostly mist by the time I met him.”

“How old was he?” you ask.

“Younger than you, I think, but a lot older than me,” she explains. “Things seemed bigger back then.”

You nod. “Alright.”

“So all day, I sat there next to him and we talked about everything. He told me that he died and that we were both ghosts. That’s how I learned that I was a ghost. His clothes were all dirty, and he told me that he died somewhere else just a little bit before and then dragged himself to that rock. And I didn’t just sit there and talk with him all day, I sat there the next day and the day after that, too, and we talked a lot. It felt really good to have someone there and talk. And every day he faded away more and more, and then when the sun was coming up, he said that he…”

Aradia stutters there. She bites her lip harshly and stares at the wood that she was messing with with a finger. She tears off a little piece of the chipping paint, and her shoulders are tenser than you’ve ever seen them. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this story is upsetting her more than anything you’ve ever seen. Her mouth wavers around a sigh.

“He looked at me and he said that he was tired. And then he said goodbye and he disappeared.”

Aradia sniffles, but not in her usual sickly ghost way. It’s almost a sob, the way it wracks her frail body. You want nothing more than to hug her and comfort her, but behind the barrier, you’re helpless to watch. You’ve never seen her this upset about anything. “Aradia… I’m so sorry.”

“He was there and then he wasn’t. I just couldn’t see him anymore. I wanted him to come back so badly. And then, when he disappeared, I got… I just got…” Aradia struggles to find words. “I was so angry. I yelled and I broke a lot of branches and I cried. And then it was gone. I don’t know what happened, because I’ve never felt that way after that. But I think that’s what it’s supposed to be like when someone dies.”

You have to say something, Vantas, anything, you useless piece of shit, make the child not feel like utter ass for once. You put your hand on the barrier. “You’re really strong, Aradia. You’ve been through so fucking much. Thank you for telling me.”

Aradia bites her lip and her shoulders sink. Her eyes are glossy, but she doesn’t cry. “Thank you for listening.”

There’s silence again, for a longer moment now. You take that time to reflect on her words. It’s fucking amazing that your self-centered ass thought your shit was so terrible when you’re faced with a six-year-old who has been abandoned, died, seen her own corpse, watched other ghosts - her only friends - disappear from existence before her very eyes and known that that was what was in store for her too.

“Karkat,” she says, suddenly. You look up. She meets your eyes again, finally. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

You blink, questioning. Aradia sighs and coughs.

“When I was with Tavros, he told me about how he died, and I told him about how I died. I told him that I felt like it was my fault that my mom left me and my brother, and that if I could have been better, she would have stayed. But Tavros told me that it wasn’t my fault, because I was just little, and I couldn’t have done anything about it. He said that sometimes people we love do bad things to us, and sometimes bad things happen to us, and it’s not our fault. I think that bad things happened to you… and it’s not your fault. Are you alright?”

You laugh, wheezing a pathetic half-cough, and wipe your eyes. “Yeah. I’m just… emotional. Thank you, Aradia.”

…

Strider comes home from school that night and clambers up to the attic. You’ve moved his laptop to the desk so that you had space to read on the bed. You look up from your novel as he takes his backpack from his back and throws it to the floor haphazardly. He seems to notice the laptop and looks to you. “Did you watch it?”

“I did,” you say, hauling yourself up and marking your book with a practiced motion. “I don’t understand why you got it for me, though.”

“What? I was curious, obviously. And I thought you would be, too, since it was your goddamn tape,” Strider says. He approaches you until you’re standing just in front of him and you have to tilt your head up to look at his face. “Did you not like it?”

“No, I liked it. I guess. It… got me to think a lot,” you concede, sighing. “Thank you.”

Strider seems taken aback by this. “Wow. High praise, coming from you.”

“Shut the fuck up, it is not high praise to thank someone for doing something. You are just so fucking eager to get your ego stroked, aren’t you? Bastard,” you say immediately. Strider rolls his eyes so dramatically that his whole head moves, which is the only reason you can tell that he’s rolling his eyes at all. Very helpful of him for your sake. You sigh deeply. “Also, just so you know. Your mother’s alcoholism. It wasn’t your fault.”

“What?” Strider asks.

“It wasn’t your fault that she drank herself to death,” you say. “You were a kid and you couldn’t have done anything about it. It’s not your fault that she was a bad mom, and it’s not your fault that she died. And yeah, she was a bad mom. She clearly loved you and you loved her, too, but she was really bad at being a mom.”

Strider is stunned. He tries for a few moments to form his mouth around words, and then just adjusts his shades instead. “Uh… okay. I don’t know why you felt the need to tell me that, but cool, I guess.”

“Because it’s important,” you say. Strider is silent again for a few moments, and then he smiles awkwardly, faintly.

“Alright. Any other impromptu psychiatrist counselin’ you wanna give me or are we finished for the night?” he asks. “Don’t go all Rose on me.”

You scoff and shove him in the arm. “Dumbass.”


	9. Evelyn's Asleep

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh hey. didn't see you there.
> 
> i told you i would finish this fic!!! i really didn't intend for this chapter to take... as long as it did. this was kind of a difficult one to write. but i swear that this fic WILL be finished even if it takes a while!
> 
> writing this has definitely been a learning experience for me as a writer and i hope y'all keep reading it! the next chapter hopefully shouldn't take AS long as this one did.

There are days when you don’t know what the fuck to do with yourself. 

When Strider is gone, no book seems interesting and the house is clean. Time seems to melt away. There’s nothing but the ticking of the clock and the sound of the wind in the cracks of the walls.

You’re lucky you’re not alone. The comparison of Aradia to a stray cat is actually quite apt. She doesn’t live with you, but she comes around most days to hang out. You’ve gotten pretty adept at recognizing the signs of whether Bro is home or not; the coat on the hanger, the door of his room being open or closed. You do have to be careful, though, since he could show up whenever.

But when he’s not home - or when Strider is home, so you have an excuse to have the TV on - you sit in the living room and watch that with Aradia. It's been quite an eye-opening experience. Apparently the date of your death was marked on the calendars of major movie studios as "ON THIS DAY, IMMEDIATELY BEGIN TO SUCK."

It’s also been something for Aradia, too. There’s so much that she’s never seen before, and she seems somehow apathetic, fascinated and baffled all at once. 

It kind of seems like she’s developed a sort of coping method of just… not dealing with things that come her way. If you ask her about a lot of the things you’ve seen on TV, she just shrugs and says, “I don’t know. I’m okay with it.”

The only thing she really seems to get excited about is dead stuff. Her own dead stuff, Strider’s dead stuff, all of it. If you find a dead rat in the laundry room, you pick it up and throw it outside so that she can take a closer look. And you talk about death with her. She’s such a morbid girl. Sometimes it feels like there’s nothing to her but her obsession with mortality, and sometimes that’s too much to handle.

“Do you think there’s any way for a ghost to leave their haunt?” you ask her one day. You’ve opened the back door and you’re standing there, leaning against the doorframe and watching her sitting in the thin coat of snow on the ground.

“I’ve never heard of that sort of thing happening,” Aradia says. “It would take a very specific sort of circumstance if it’s possible.”

“Strider asked me what would happen if we expanded the house,” you continue. “Like, if we added a room that comes out towards the forest. Would I be able to go in it? Would you?”

“No,” Aradia says. “It’s like you said about that spa that one time, that if they were to bulldoze the house and the forest and build something over it, we still wouldn’t be able to touch each other. You would be stuck in the area that was once the house, and I would be stuck in the woods. At least that’s what I think, from what I’ve heard.”

You hum. There’s a moment of comfortable silence.

“I won’t be here for a day or two,” she says, then. “I’m going to explore some more.”

“You’ve been here for 150 years. Haven’t you already explored every inch of these woods seven times over?” you ask.

“Yeah, but it’s not like there’s that much else to do,” Aradia says. “Just walking to the other edge and back will take me that long. But I can still hear you if you call for me. You’re loud enough, for sure.”

You scoff. “Alright, missus. Hey, there’s another thing, though. Strider wondered if we could have a movie night on the weekend. So… not tomorrow or the day after, but the day after that.”

“Yeah,” Aradia says. “I’ll be back by then.”

…

"Wait, wait. I thought you said Snake killed Big Boss?" you ask. Strider makes a long 'uh' sound and taps furiously on his controller. The character on the screen dives behind a big metal box to hide from guards. He shakes his head.

"No, no, no, no. Well, yeah, actually, no, yeah, he did, I guess, but you're thinking of a different Snake and different Boss. The Snake that killed the Boss was Big Boss - also Naked Snake except now that's not who Big Boss is at this point anymore - and the other Snake that we're talking about right now is Solid Snake, and Venom Snake is Big Boss now, and Venom Snake Big Boss is the Boss that- goddamnit!" His explanation is cut short by a gunshot on screen. You groan loudly into your hands. He's been trying to explain the nonsensical plot of this stupid game series for twenty asinine, painful minutes. You don't understand how anybody could comprehend this. Fucking Boss Boss this and Gas Snake that.

"That's so fucking nonsensical," you complain, gesturing at the Game Over screen. "Who the fuck would devote hours and hours to understanding the lore of some moronic franchise about different iterations of the same people murdering each other over and over?"

"What if I told you about the blossoming romance," Strider says, tapping on his controller. You roll your eyes.

"Okay, I'll bite. The- hey! Stop laughing! I did not say that because of the romance! Only because I've already wasted twenty minutes of my afterlife on this shit and I'm going to see it through! Stop fucking laughing!" Strider trembles with a hand over his mouth.

"Dude, it's so fucking funny that you're willing to stand _anything_ for a bad romance subplot. You have the lowest standards for storytelling that I've ever seen anybody have, and I'm friends with John," he manages to get out through the gaps between his fingers. “You really need to improve your taste, my man.”

“_I_ need to improve my taste? Alright, remind me again what your favorite movie was? Oh, yeah, that’s right: fucking Birdemic! The cinematic equivalent just an actual turd sitting on a counter for two hours straight, because apparently that literal piece of shit was irony gold!" you say.

"But it is, though," Strider insists, restarting the level.

"Fuck you," you say. The conversation ends there, as Strider begins to play. You lean over and watch with intrigue what's happening on the screen. The guy on screen picks up his gun and aims at a target and Strider bites his lip in focus. He doesn't realize that a guard was turning the corner a second ago and is going to see him if he doesn't- you grab his shoulder. "Guard on your right!"

Strider startles and fires his gun too early, missing the target. Gunshots fire and the screen goes back to Game Over, though these facts fall to your periphery. There's a sword pointed at you. Strider's holding it right to the center of your chest.

Your back is suddenly pressed to the wall by the bed and Strider has one foot on the floor, like he's ready to run for his life. There's a single beat of silence. Then he seems to realize the situation. The sword falls from his hand to the bed. He falls backwards, falling to the floor.

You lean over the bed's edge to check on him. He's lying there on his back with one trembling hand under his shades, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. His other hand is above him, just as unstable, opening and closing a fist like he's trying to get the feeling of the sword's handle out of it. His voice is as shaky as his hands. "Shit, dude, I'm really sorry. Uh… you… startled me."

"Yeah, no fucking kidding," you say. "Are you alright?"

"Got the air knocked out of me, but uh, yeah, other than that, I'm fine." The continued trembling betrays just how much of a lie that is. He pushes himself up from the floor into a sitting position. His breathing is ever so slightly uneven. He picks up the sword. You furrow your brows.

“Where the hell did you even pull that from?” you ask. “I know you have them hidden everywhere, but fuck me, where was that? Up your ass?”

“Yeah, definitely, pulled it from my asshole, dragged it right out of there,” Strider sighs. He slips the sword under the bed, in the space between the bed itself and the cardboard boxes stored underneath. He stands, stretching out his arms. “Okay. Uh… maybe we should take a break from MGS for now?”

You see the way his shoulders hunch forward when he lets his arms drop down and you realize just how freaked out he must have been. Part of you gnaws with guilt over being the one to startle him. You’ve gotten used to the amount of deadly blades you come into contact with on a daily basis while living with the Striders, but you can imagine that it might not be so easy for someone who can actually die, even if he’s lived in this environment for much longer than you have. You nod.

You can’t help what wonder what caused him to be this way.

…

“Aradia! Time for the movie night!” you shout out of the window. Ever since Aradia told you that she wanted to hang out more with you and Strider, you’ve been trying to arrange these hangouts whenever Bro’s not at home. Sometimes you play board games - turns out Aradia is incredible at Operation - but more often, you watch movies.

It's been a little under two weeks since you started to try and do this. Since you can't do it when Bro is home, you've had one or two hangouts per week so far. Usually it’s just you, Aradia and Strider. The two of them seem to get along quite well. Sometimes it can get frustrating having to translate between them all the time, even if you try to do it to the best of your ability. 

By now, they’ve figured out a system where Strider can mostly communicate with Aradia, but only in yes or no questions. He does this by asking her to “tap once for yes, twice for no.” It’s worked relatively well so far, even if Aradia still can’t get the full extent of her opinions for just that. But, to be fair, if she has more to say, you’re there to deliver the message.

Sometimes Strider’s friends come to hang out too. Rose, especially, is very excited for this sort of hangout, since she gets to study ghosts or whatever. She claims she's making progress, but you doubt that, considering that she's the only member of her friend group to even have a whiff of Aradia's appearance, and John still can't even see you. Jade is vaguely aware of your presence, but hasn't really seen you the same way Rose and Strider have.

Enough about those idiots, though. Tonight, it’s just you three. Or at least it will be, once Aradia shows up. She doesn't have that much of a presence, since she's invisible to Strider, but these movie nights are for her above all else. She already told you she would be here. You would be extremely surprised if she didn’t want to join now, and even more so if she’s just completely giving you the silent treatment. She’s still not here. How far away did she go? She told you she’d be back by now.

“Aradia!” you call again after a minute or so, from the top of your lungs. Still no response. That’s… starting to get a little bit concerning. Strider comes into the living room with a huge bowl of popcorn, mouth full. You give him a sneer. “Close your mouth when you chew, you fucking animal.”

“It's a free country, dude, I can eat my 'corns however I want,” Strider says, muffled, and swallows the popcorn. “Any sign of ghosty girl yet?”

You shake your head and sigh. “She's never taken this long before. Where the fuck could she be?”

“Maybe she’s busy. You think we should wait for her for a while?” Strider asks. You furrow your brows and stare at the edge of the forest. Worry claws at your throat. Could something have happened to her? You don’t know what happens if a ghost gets impaled on a branch or falls over and hits their head on a rock. Strider's voice alerts you from your thoughts. “Hey. Earth to Karkat.”

“...Sorry. Yeah. Let’s wait for a bit,” you concede. Across the room, Strider slides onto the sofa, tossing more popcorn into his mouth. You leave the window and walk over to sit next to him. "What did you pick for tonight?"

"This one was a treat for you. It's Stuart Little!" He pulls out his phone and waves it in your face. The screen has a white mouse on it. You stare at the mouse. Why did they make a movie about Stuart Little. You turn and stare at Strider instead. He smirks a little. "It's got Michael J. Fox in it."

"Look, just because you know who my favorite actor is doesn't mean that you immediately know whether or not I'm going to like a horrid, shitty movie about a dumb white mouse in human clothes!" You grab his phone from his hand. 

"Sure, sure. But I'm kinda proud that I found a film with Michael J. Fox, to be fair. Like, if it wasn’t the first movie I saw at the video store, we’d be watching Birdemic again," he explains. You scowl at him a little harder than usual to communicate that he's being incoherent. For once, he gets the hint. "I thought that Aradia might like it if it's for kids."

You scoff. "Then you clearly know nothing about Aradia! She doesn't want to watch anything that doesn't have plot-important elements of psychological horror and/or at least two gruesome deaths in it."

"Oh. I didn't know that," Srrider admits. "...How the hell have you raised her?"

"She was like that when I died, goddamit! I haven't raised her any way! I just gave her films I happened to have on VHS and she happened to like the ones full of blood and gore." Even though you tell him this, Strider just nods fakely and makes condescending 'mm-hmm' noises. You groan, recognizing this as a battle you cannot win. "How garbage is that thing, on a scale of one to Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff?"

"Oh, Stuart Little? It's not quite on SBaHJ's level, but it's up there. It's pretty close," he says. "And I adore it."

"Of course you do," you sigh and drop the phone. "Never let it be said that you have a better taste in movies than me. The shit I have to endure because of you is fucking ridiculous. I have no doubt in my mind that that thing is an absolute bastardization of the classic children’s book and that it’s colored by the nasty corporate greed of-"

“I’m sorry, ‘bastardization of a classic children’s book?’” Strider asks incredulously. “You’re seriously giving me the fucking ‘the book was better’ shit about fucking Stuart goddamn Little? I know M. Night Shaymalan was involved in the making of this, but holy fuck, prejudice much? You haven’t even seen the movie!”

“Go fuck yourself!” you say, shifting on the couch so you can properly rant at him. "Alright, asshole, have you even read the original Stuart Little? I bet you haven't, you 21st century fuckwad!"

Strider rolls not only his eyes, but his entire head. He bops you on the head with the DVD case. "Okay, okay, whatever. Let's cultural exchange this motherfucker. You watch Stuart Little, the classic 1999 film with me, and I survive Stuart Little, the fucking book, like the itty bitty prettyboy from the 50s that we all knew I was on the inside. Deal?"

"Don't fucking tell me what to do," you growl. "Fine! But not because you told me to or because you want me to. I'm only doing this to better understand how you, as a person, grew to become the kind of monstrous assblaster that I've been dealing with for the better part of two months."

"Yeah, yeah, for science, of course," Strider mocks. "Oh, and also, you better own the Stuart Little book yourself, 'cos I ain't borrowing that shit from the library just to make fun of you. I have at least a little bit of dignity."

"Like hell you do! I've seen you wear the same underwear for three days in a row. And your 1 AM snack runs. Yeah, I remember those! Any arguments you make about having dignity fall on deaf fucking ears, considering the shit I've already seen you do with my own two functioning eyes!"

"What's not valid about a guy grabbing some chips at 1 AM? Maybe I was hungry, you ever think about that, Karkles?" Strider asks, getting up and walking towards the TV. He looks at you from over his shoulders as he turns the thing on.

"Yeah, you probably were, because most people eat dinner before they go to bed whereas you just opt for a handful of tortilla chips and a few Reese's cups instead! Try eating properly for once in your life and see if that correlates to the amount of salt and oil you decide to inject directly into your bloodstream," you criticize. Strider pops the disc into the player. 

You grew up with a lot of newfangled technology. Computers, Walkmans, VHS tapes- those were the shit. As a kid, you thought technology was ridiculously advanced. Now, things are much, much wilder. Strider can pop open his laptop and find damn near any historical fact he wants, tell you the exact release date of any movie in the matter of minutes. Or he can pull up the monstrosity that is Stuart Little (the movie) on his phone and suddenly it's on the TV screen instead.

You relax into the ugly, bright throw pillows the Striders brought when they moved in. "What about Aradia?"

"She probably doesn't mind missing the start of it," Strider says. He taps on his phone once, twice, and the movie begins to play. You try to concentrate on the movie, you really do, with its fucking talking cats and other such inane bullshit, but you keep getting plagued by anxiety about Aradia. You rack your brain for any previous instance where she would have taken this long to come over, but you’re coming up empty. Strider huffs. “Oof. The CGI in this is so fucking old.”

“Really? Of all the things to criticize in this piece of rancid shit of a movie, the graphics is what you go for? Come on. There are worse things about this,” you say half-heartedly. “The Smalls are supposed to be the perfect family, but instead they come off as strange and unusual. They don't act like human beings. They're like cardboard cutouts, Strider, the writing is so bad! And the pacing, holy shit! I don't want to blink, lest I miss the rest of the movie!"

“You know that makes it sound like you do actually enjoy it?” Strider snarks. You scoff and slap him on the arm. He shuts up after that, though you’re not quite sure how thankful you are for it. On one hand, he’s finally quiet for once in his fucking life, which is a miracle and a blessing, but it also means that you are confined in the silence of a movie you’re not paying attention to and the hellish pits of your own mind.

At first, you’re just thinking about Aradia. You wonder what could have happened to her, what would have been important enough to make her miss this. Maybe she met another ghost out there somewhere. Would have to be a ghost that can’t move, like Tavros was. You know from other ghosts she’s told you about that most of them aren’t like that, though. 

You can move freely, after all, at least in the confines of your house, and Aradia herself has a much bigger playing field of a 5 acre forest instead of a single, tiny house. Besides, new ghosts are a rare, rare occurrence. Aradia has told you that you and she are the only ghosts in the area. Why would another one appear now, of all times?

So it seems less likely, comparatively, that there’s a new ghost in town. What else could have prevented her from coming? 

Maybe she’s just busy. Maybe she’s rearranging her bone collection or something of that ilk. Maybe she’s up in that treehouse. Maybe she couldn’t hear you even though you yelled many times at the top of your lungs and she has always heard you before. You know that’s not the likeliest scenario. Something bad must’ve happened.

You try not to think about it. Every scenario your treacherous mind generates is worse than the last, and you refuse to consciously acknowledge them. If you entertained the horror scenarios you know are very potential, and probably even likely, you would only feel worse. You should really focus on this stupid kids’ film now and stop fussing. 

And what about Strider? He doesn’t seem to care, does he? Of course he doesn’t. Yeah, sure, he’s spoken to Aradia before. He likes Aradia, and she likes him, but he doesn’t get it. He doesn’t understand how much she means to you.

He doesn’t really get anything, does he? He doesn’t get all the bullshit you’ve gone through. Thirty years stuck in this godawful house, watching everything that was once safe and familiar start to break and fall apart around you, the knowledge that some mysterious, unknowable fate is slowly creeping up on you, the terror of someone you despise in the same house, someone that might beat you into the dirt the moment you step out of the room. He doesn’t know what it was like to go to school every day, knowing that all eyes were on you, waiting for you to slip up so that you could be made the fucking laughing stock of the world.

"Alright, so, uh, here's what I'm thinking," Strider says, suddenly. You glance over and find him staring at you. You think he's trying to pretend to watch the TV, but he's really not succeeding if he is. The tilt of his head is a little too obvious. "At what point of his life did he like… realize that he was a mouse? Did he always know that shit or was it a big existential crisis revelation one day aged five when he looked in a tiny mouse mirror in his mouse pajamas and just went, you know, 'oh my god, I'm a fuckin' mouse?'"

"What in the shit of a limp-dicked Stegosaurus are you on about?" you ask. "His parents were mice. And there are apparently several families of anthropomorphic mice in New York City. Clearly it's not that outrageous for him to be a mouse."

"Did you see any other mice in the orphanage? And the way the Littles looked at him when they saw him? Dude. Clearly mice are weird to at least some degree. Oh, is there like… mousephobia? Are they an oppressed minority? Holy shit, Stuart Little is deeper than I thought," Strider rambles to himself.

You're a little bit upset by how much sense his analysis makes. Oh, god. Stuart Little can’t be a metaphor for oppression, can he? What if Stuart Little is… gay? In the movie, anyway. In the book, there was that girl that he wanted to go on a date with. He’s voiced by Michael J. Fox, too. No. Michael J. Fox isn’t gay. Why would he be gay? That would be crazy. It’s just you. You made that up because he’s cute, and no other reason. That’s it, isn’t it? You have a celebrity crush on Michael J. fucking Fox?

“Uh, hey, ‘Kat, you alright?” Strider asks. He’s staring at you. Motherfucker has the fucking gall to call you by stupid nicknames.

“Fuck you. Die,” you respond.

"Uh huh. What's up?" he continues. Piece of shit.

"Literally fucking nothing. The world is upside down. The concept of up no longer exists," you snap. 

There’s a few seconds of weighted silence. Then Strider draws a sharp breath.

"Hey, so, totally unrelated question, but, uh… Karkat, are you… gay?" And there it is. You know he knew before now, way before now, he must have. He saw your poems. And heard your descriptions of the male protagonists in your favorite movies are more than a little too flattering. Strider chews his lip. “I mean, sorry for being like, forward about it, I guess, but like, I’ve just been wondering, and I thought maybe it was, like, prudent to ask? Sorry if it’s like-”

“Shut up,” you say. He does. Then you say, “I don’t really like talking about it. It wasn’t really easy to… come to terms with.”

Strider doesn’t say anything. You kind of wish he would.

“But yeah,” you say and leave it there.

Strider still doesn’t say anything. You wait, and you wait, and you wait, and then he shrugs and says, “alright. Cool.”

A few seconds of silence.

And then he says, very quietly, “thanks for telling me.”

And the conversation is over.

…

You expected it to change things, and it does, sort of. 

After the movie night where Aradia literally ghosted you, Strider started to act a little bit more aloof around you. He’d speak to you less and do more of those quiet “cool” nods that he gives to his Bro. Frustrating. Not only are you plagued with worry because Aradia is now gone, but you also have to deal with this motherfucker.

At least he’s not smashing your head into lockers.

And over time, things relax a little bit. After a week or so of you bothering him, he smiles again. Starts telling you that you’re clearly into the protagonist of this new show you’re watching, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Just because you think that the outfit design is cute and that Will Smith may or may not also be cute does not mean shit.

You still haven’t heard from Aradia. Not since she told you she was going to explore. It’s frustrating and scary. She’s never been gone for this long, especially not after telling you that she wouldn’t be. And she’s never missed a movie night before.

“You still thinking about Aradia?” Strider asks, watching you stare out the attic window. You turn to look at him. He’s on his bed with his laptop on his thighs, working on something. One of his earbuds is hanging against his chest and his fingers are frozen on the keys. You glare at him and then look back at the forest’s edge outside. Strider sighs. “It’s not like she could have died out there, you know.”

“You wouldn’t be worried if a six-year-old girl you were taking care of vanished for days on end?” you ask.

“Not if said girl had been living out on her own for like a hundred years before I even met her,” Strider rebuts. You shake your head derisively. The tapping of keys starts up again for a few minutes. Then it stops again. “Look, if you’re going to just sit and be emo, could you at least do it somewhere else so that I don’t feel shitty for ignoring you?”

“This is my house. I can be wherever the fuck I want,” you counter.

“She’s going to come back eventually,” Strider says.

“What if she doesn’t?” you snap, turning to him. “What if she did die? What if she vanished out of existence somewhere in that fucking forest and I’ll never know about it? Don’t you seriously get it, you fucking dipshit? She’s been literally on death’s door for decades on end now, and now suddenly she’s stopped showing up!”

Strider doesn’t say anything. You choke on your words and your eyes start to sting.

“How would you feel if your best friend was about to die and you had no way of knowing where she is anymore?” you continue. “I’m done with losing things! I don’t want to lose her! I was meant to be here for her, and I can’t be, because I’m stuck in this godforsaken fucking house and best case scenario she’s out there somewhere on her own, cold and alone and- and- and she’s six!”

Strider stares a little longer, but there’s a melancholy on her face now. He takes a deep breath like he’s about to say something, but then he just exhales. He slams his laptop closed. “Alright. I’ll go look for her.”

“What?” you say. You realize your eyes are full of tears and you start wiping at them. Strider is already halfway to the attic door. You grab his arm. “Wait. You can’t even see her. How will you find her?”

“She’ll let me know,” Strider responds. He stops and turns to look at you. You can see the attic reflected in his shades, though your own reflection is still absent. “Look. She’s not dumb. If you think something happened to her, then I’ll go check. I still think she’s probably fine, but it’s got you like this. I’ll find her.”

Something in the tone of his voice makes you believe him. Slowly, you let his arm slip from your hold. “...If you die, too, don’t bother coming back as a ghost.”

Strider snorts. “Wouldn’t dream of it. Bye.”

He leaps down the stairs two steps at a time. You see him grab a beanie and his jacket and rush down the hallway to the back door. It slams shut and…

Well.

You weren’t alone before, but now you are.


	10. Show Her Home

You shouldn’t have let him leave. You should have told him to stay. He’s such a fucking dumb piece of shit- he’s probably tripped over a rock and smashed open his own skull by now. Not only is Aradia gone, but you’ve also lost the only other person who was around.

You pace back and forth in the kitchen. Your eyes flit to the window every few seconds. Strider’s been gone for maybe half an hour, maybe an hour, you don’t know. There’s a jittery tension in every atom of your being. You feel like you can’t stand still. Thoughts - terrifying images of the sort of things that might have happened to either one of them - keep racing through your mind at literal breakneck speed.

You can’t just stay here and keep watching and waiting. Can you? You’ll drive yourself into insanity. What if they don’t ever come back and you’re stuck here waiting, staring out of this window until the end of time? What if you’ll stay here forever, locked in an afterlife where your only unfinished business is not knowing where Strider and Aradia went? Like that fucking dog in Japan. You forget its name.

You sit down in the kitchen chair with a groan. What if Strider does come back, but he doesn’t find Aradia? God, you should have told him to stay. He only left because you were being such a nervous, paranoid spaz. If only you hadn’t freaked out so bad, at least he would still be here. But then, what about Aradia…?

You look up and stare at the edge of the forest. It seems so far away. You remember when you were a kid, it was your only escape out of this miserable house. Now it’s like a dark, snowy monster that’s eaten up the only people that made purgatory tolerable.

Wait.

Oh god. Oh, shit. He’s back!

You almost trip over yourself running to the window and shoving it open. Cold winter air blows into your face. “Strider!”

It is him, pushing through the shrubs that separate you from the forest. There’s a little shape curled up in his arms, in a bridal style carry. You’d recognize that battered nightgown in an instant.

Strider jogs down the side of the hill, careful not to trip on the snow. Aradia grasps at his shirt weakly.

“You found her,” you almost sob when he comes to the window.

“Yeah,” Strider heaves. His breath is coming in in thick white puffs. He holds Aradia up, closer to the window. “She fell into a hole of some sort and got stuck. Wouldn’ta noticed her if she didn’t throw rocks at me and grab onto my leg when I got close enough.”

Aradia coughs and leans against Strider. She turns her head slightly and looks at you with blank, tired eyes.

“Aradia,” you say. You might be crying. You’re really, really trying not to. You put your hand against the barrier that traps you inside. “Aradia.”

She stares at you and you think you might see the faintest smile on her face. Her voice is wheezy, almost too quiet to hear. “Dave saved me.”

“He did,” you say. You wish you could reach out to touch her. “Oh my god. Are you okay?”

“Tired,” Aradia says, cut off by a breathy, choked cough. Her legs have almost completely faded up to the knee, and you can barely see her hands anymore. “My chest hurts really bad.”

“What do we do?” you ask Strider. “We can’t just put her into the snow, and she can’t come inside.”

“Can we put her on the porch?” Strider suggests, lifting Aradia closer to himself. She looks so small and weak, like an injured deer calf. He’s holding her delicately, and it just makes it clearer how frail she is. You shake your head.

“Neither of us can go on the porch,” you say. “It’s no man’s land. I don’t know why that’s the way it works, but it is.”

Strider makes a ‘hrmm’ noise. “Do you have, like, sleeping bags or something? We could bring one out for her. It’s not great, but at least she wouldn’t be in the snow.”

You nod. “Hold on.”

There’s something that you haven’t felt in a long time carrying you when you run through the hallway and down the stairs to the basement. It’s not fear. You’ve been intimately familiar with fear ever since you can remember. But it is anxiety, undercut with something else. Something desperate and needy and…

The basement is dark, but you know where to find what you’re looking for. You put it there yourself, after all, all those years ago when you arranged everything in this room. It’s on the top shelf of the second cabinet on the left. You have to stretch up on your toes to reach it. Curse these tiny legs. It almost knocks you over when it finally falls down. The only sleeping bag you own.

You run back up the stairs two steps at a time. The kitchen window is still open. Aradia is resting her head against Strider’s chest. For a moment you panic, because she looks dead. She’s frozen still, no movement, no breathing. Then you remember: she is dead. Thankfully, only once over. She rolls her head around to look at you when you come close.

You push the sleeping bag out of the window, and Strider places Aradia down for a moment when he takes it. You try your best to see when he slots it by the window and helps Aradia slide in.

“What is this?” Aradia asks. “It’s like a bug’s cocoon.”

“I guess,” you say. “It’s kinda like that, but it’s made for humans. It’s probably not very warm, but… at least it’s not the ground.”

“Thank you,” Aradia says. “Tell Dave I said thank you, too. Tell him that, will you, please?”

“I will,” you assure her. Strider zips the bag up. Aradia sinks into it. It’s twice her size, so it cocoons her completely. Her hair is flowing out from the face hole part.

Strider stands up and sighs. “Is she okay with that?”

“She is,” you say. “She’s not complaining, anyway. But she wanted to thank you.”

“Oh,” Strider mumbles. He shifts awkwardly. “No problem, I guess.”

“Wow,” you say. “Your nobility and chivalry sweep me off my fucking feet.”

“Only the best for you,” Strider says.

…

“We can’t leave her there,” you say to Strider once he comes inside. You convinced him to drink some tea, even though he insisted that he ‘didn’t need it’ because he was ‘strong enough to handle some 20° weather without problem.’ Then he sneezed and sighed and took the mug from your hand without further complaints. You told him you’d kill him if he caught a cold.

“Well, where the fuck can we put her?” Strider responds. “What are we gonna do, transport a studio apartment here from New York fucking City? Hello, Mr. Land Lord - first name Land, last name Lord - we need a place for a fucking toddler from a hundred or so years ago to stay.”

“First grader!” you interrupt.

“What?” Strider asks.

“She’s 6,” you say. “That’s not a toddler. Not even a preschooler. She’d be in the first grade.”

“Oh, my god. That’s really the fucking thing you’re focusing on?”

“It matters a lot to me that you act like you know so fucking much about how to take care of her when you don’t even know how fucking old she is!” you yell.

“I know she’s six, dude, I’m not a child-rearing specialist!” Strider says and tugs the blanket you gave him closer to himself.

“I’m so done with you,” you sigh hoarsely. “When is Rose going to be here?”

“It’s like a ten minute walk,” Strider says. “She has a life, y’know. We’re lucky she was down to clown and not busy with something.”

“Yeah, fucking whatever,” you snap. The conversation seems to be over. You stare into the hallway and Strider stares… wherever he’s staring. You don’t care. You’re not even looking that way.

…

…

“...Sorry,” you say. Strider makes a curious sound. With a long-suffering sigh, you drag yourself to the couch and sit beside him without making eye contact. “Thanks for finding her. I can't really be mad at you. I was… y’know. Sort of freaking out, and now… I don’t know. I feel more exhausted than I have in a while.”

Strider hums. There’s silence for some more. Then he says, “yeah. I get it.”

Neither of you says anything after that.

Not before the doorbell rings and Strider gets up. You follow closely behind. You’re not surprised to see John, Rose and Jade behind the door. For once, Jade doesn’t have that hellhound of hers with her, though.

“We came as soon as we could,” Rose says, unwrapping a scarf from around her neck. “What happened, exactly?”

“Aradia got stuck in like a snake den or some shit like that,” Strider explains hurriedly. “Karkat got freaked out, ‘cos he hadn’t heard from her in a while. I went out to look for her and brought her back in. She’s outside in a sleeping bag now.”

“Is she asleep?” John asks, slipping his jacket off.

“Ghosts can’t sleep, fuckwad. Everyone knows that,” you say.

“Karkat says no,” Rose translates. “I assume she’s resting, though.”

Strider nods.

You offer tea to the visitors, too. John gawks giddily at the concept of floating tea mugs. You ask Strider if you should perform a jig or something equally as idiotic to please this boy-skylark. Strider smirks and says that maybe you should. You don’t, obviously, because that would be fucking stupid.

“So, the problem is, we can’t really keep her where she is now,” Strider explains to his friends. “Well, I mean, we could, but it’s more of a temporary solution. Lots of shit could go wrong. So we need to find a new place for her to stay.”

“And you said she can’t come inside the house? Or on the porch?” Jade asks between sips of tea. She wanted lots of honey in hers. Strider shakes his head. It’s really frustrating, wanting to speak up but knowing that half of the people here won’t know what you’re saying. Jade rubs her chin. “On the roof?”

“No can fucking do,” you say. “I can go on the roof. That means it’s part of the house. I don’t know how high up it goes, but I know she can’t go up there, and I don’t think lifting her into the fucking stratosphere is an effort worth putting energy into.”

Strider watches you explain and then shakes his head at Jade. She sighs and sinks into the couch cushions.

“She can’t leave the forest, right?” Rose asks. She’s sitting on the carpet, cross-legged, with a blanket over her shoulders. She almost looks in her element in her winter blouse and the black mug in her hands. “Could we make some sort of shelter for her there? Like one of those 'houses' made by leaning branches on trees we used to build as kids.”

“Ooh!” John goes. Everyone looks at him. He bites his lip with fascination. “Could we put her in the treehouse?”

“Treehouse?” you and Strider ask at the same time.

“Remember the treehouse?” John asks, though he’s clearly directing it towards the girls. “The one that Jane, Jake and Roxy built when they were kids, that they brought us to later when they were too old for it. You remember that? I wonder if it’s still there.”

“It is still there,” you interrupt. John tries to keep talking, but Jade gently places a hand over his mouth to shut him up. At least she can tell you’re talking, even if she doesn’t quite hear you. “Aradia told me there was a treehouse. I remember. She told me she’d made it a base of hers and that she stores her things in there.”

“Well, then, that’s it, right?” Rose says. “We’ll take her to the treehouse when she’s strong enough to move again and she can stay there and recover. She’ll have a home of her own.”

Oh.

Something stings in your chest when Rose says that. If Aradia lives in the treehouse, does that mean that she wouldn’t… come over anymore?

No, that’s ridiculous. Right?

“Well, it’s settled, then,” Strider says. “Karkamom, you wanna ask her how she feels?”

You open and close your mouth like a fish out of water. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll go ask.”

“Cool,” Strider says.

You can still hear the others’ chatter in the living room when you go to the kitchen window. Aradia’s sleeping bag is tucked so close to the window that you can’t see her, but you know that she’s there.

“Aradia,” you say. “You there?”

Aradia hums. Her voice is muffled and weak like a mouse squeaking inside a wall. “I’m here.”

“Strider and the others suggested we could take you to that treehouse in the woods when you’re a little stronger,” you explain. “Is that okay with you?”

Aradia hums again. “I’m okay with everything. I don’t mind.”

“No, but for real,” you insist. “Do you think it’s a good idea?”

Aradia sighs. She pauses for just long enough that you think that maybe she’s not planning to respond any further. But then she says, “yeah. Okay.”

“Okay,” you say. The stinging in your chest is still there. “How are you doing?”

“I’m okay,” Aradia says, but her voice betrays her. She breaks into coughs. “Guess I’ve felt better.”

“Just get some rest,” you say. “As much as you can.”

…

Strider’s friends come over again four days later to move Aradia to the treehouse. She’s a lot better. She was in that trance-like tired state for a few days after Strider brought her back, but now she’s talking properly again and moving around on her own. She’s not quite recovered, yet. She stumbles around more than she used to. She tripped this morning, telling you her ankle was still "a little under the weather."

You were a little embarrassed by how upset you were that you couldn’t wipe the mud off her face.

You’re so glad Strider found her. And impressed. You were always sort of mocking of the ‘tap once for yes, twice for no’ system they’d developed before. But if it wasn’t for that - and her friendship with Strider in general - she might still be stuck in that hole in the woods. The thought scares you.

Rose said that Aradia needs to be in bedrest until she’s better. That struck you as a little unnecessary, and you made sure to let her know. Rose insisted, and claimed that your instincts to take care of her were clouding your judgment. You shouted at her and told her you had no such fucking instincts. 

So, anyway, Aradia’s in bedrest in the forest now. By bedrest, you of course mean “being stuck in a tight-ass location for way too long with nothing to do.” Rose is such a moron. She’s not the one that’s been stuck in her house for 30 years. She doesn’t get it.

You obviously can’t go and see Aradia in person, but Strider has offered to trek over and check on her every now and again. You wish you could go. Now you’ll see both of them even less than you already did.

That’s life, you guess. Losing everyone you love slowly.

…

You start to reread your books again. You start with the classics. There’s a lot of stuff that you’ve forgotten in the two months or so since Strider arrived and you stopped having time to read. Not enough to neutralize the sense that every phrase in every novel is carved into your brain like a cattle’s branding. But enough to make you realize how much you missed reading.

You’re flipping through the pages. The moon provides a little bit of light in the dark attic room. The words almost seem to glow off the page with the way the shine is hitting them. The window is freezing against you, but then, you’re not exactly a space heater either, are you?

The bed creaks. You look up. Strider’s sitting up and reaching for his laptop in the darkness across the room. His pajama shirt is loose-fitting and has a circular stain just below his left shoulder from when he tried to eat a whole pepperoni pizza by himself in bed. He cracks the laptop open. In a few moments, the digital light from its screen illuminates his face. He gives you a glance behind his shades.

You turn back to your book. It’s not the first time this has happened. Sometimes he wakes up or he can’t sleep. You get that. You were kind of an insomniac even before you died.

So you coexist with Strider, him doing something on his laptop and you just reading. It’s how it goes most nights. Sometimes you leave to give him some privacy until he falls asleep, but you think he’s come to find comfort in your presence. At least, you hope so. Otherwise it would be weird that you… have found some in his.

“Karkat,” he asks, voice hoarse. You look up. He’s holding his controllers in his hands. “Wanna play something?”

You put your book down and slip through the room. His “Steam Page” is open on the screen. The list of games is almost incomprehensible to you. He boots up one of his dumb chef games and hands you a controller.

Usually, he beats you with ease in pretty much any game. It’s because he knows how to play them and you just can’t get the hang of it. And also because he’s a lying, cheating piece of fuck, and you can see through his horseshit even though he says he’s literally just playing the game how it’s meant to be played. Fuck him and his ass.

But tonight, it’s almost like he’s not even trying.

“What the fuck? I did the right thing, didn’t I? This piece of shit is broken, Strider, look at this,” you protest when the game gives you no points for your best try for the 5th time in a row.

“Sorry, can’t look. I’m busy sweeping the floor with this thing,” Strider says gently. His fingers move on the controller, but they’re not as controlled as usual. He fucks something up, tenses and shakes his head. The clock at the bottom of the screen ticks down and the level ends. You watch the points rack up.

“...Wait. I won?” you ask. It’s not realistic. You never beat Strider at games. “How is that possible?”

Strider’s staring at the screen. With a sigh, he flops onto the bed. His shirt is rucked up slightly, exposing a sliver of stomach and the waistband of his boxers under his sweatpants.

You barely see his eyebrows, furrowed under his shades. Watching him there, you can’t stop yourself from asking anymore. “...What’s wrong?”

“What do you mean?” he asks. He never talks about the shit that’s bothering him. You’ve tried to get him to, ever since the night his mom died. But he hasn’t wanted to talk about that. Or anything, really. He kind of just deflects it, like he’s trying to now. You thought you were getting somewhere with him, but he’s just… clammed up again.

“I mean with you and your emotional constipation,” you say. “Something’s bothering you.”

“Nothing’s bothering me.” Strider turns his head and faces away. “Nothing I can tell you about.”

“Oh, yeah?” you snap. “How about you drop the fucking act and let me help you again? What’s the big deal?”

“There’s no deal,” he insists. “What reason would I have to feel weird about telling you about all my feelings? No. There’s no reason. Because I’m not not telling you about my feelings, because I don’t… have any. I’m not feeling any.”

It takes you like eleven seconds to connect the pieces in your head. “Wait, is this because of the fucking Stuart Little thing?”

“What?” Strider asks, hurriedly sitting up.

“Is this because of what I said when we were watching Stuart Little?” you ask. “Yeah, emotional intimacy is fucking homoerotic, right? This is that, isn’t it? And now you think- God, I thought you were better than that-”

“I didn’t say that,” Strider interrupts.

“You sure are fucking acting like it, though,” you say. Something is burning up in your stomach and making your head feel tight. “I can’t believe it. Give me a better reason for this shit!”

“Maybe I just don’t want you to know about every single fucking thought in my brain,” Strider says. “I’m a person, okay? A human being, and I need some space. I don’t want to tell anyone about everything I’m thinking, okay?”

“You used to tell me,” you say. “Before- Didn’t you?”

“I’ve known you for, like, a month,” Strider says. “This isn’t some Katniss and Gale shit. You aren’t my childhood best friend who I’ve always told everything like a goddamn imaginary friend in the mirror that I talk to when I’m alone. You’re a ghost that lives in the house I moved into.”

“You are the only person, dead or alive, who knows as much about me as you do,” you say, and why does it hurt to say that? “I thought maybe that was mutual.”

“Well, maybe you thought wrong,” Strider mumbles. “Look, I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

“I just want to fucking help!” you say. What a fucking asshole! You can't believe you thought he was different from the rest of them. “I’ve been fucking trying this whole time.”

“I know!” he says coarsely. “I know.”

“And? That’s it?” you ask.

“Let me think,” he says. And then he doesn’t fucking say anything. You push yourself away from him and off the bed. Fine. You’ll leave him be. Whatever.

You walk over to tiny Prospit. You haven’t worked on it in a while. It shows. The mall is only half-completed, still. One of the windows is missing. You feel bad about it. It was your comfort for so long.

The diamond Aradia gave you is by it on the table. You take it into your hand. Dust has settled on it and obscured some of the luster since you last checked on it. You wipe it off on your sweater. A few moments later, it’s as shiny as it was the day Aradia gave it to you. You wonder how many are forgotten in the moss in those woods. There might be dozens. But none are exactly like this one.

“I had a nightmare,” Strider says. It’s quiet enough that you almost think he’s talking to himself, but he’s not. You know, because when you turn around to check, you find him looking at you. He looks away when you do. “I thought that we could just play and I wouldn’t have to think about it.”

Slowly, you place the diamond back on the table, eyes locked on him. “...I wanted to help.”

“You gonna say that a couple more times or do you think I got the gist?” Strider snarks. You give him a glare.

“Whatever.”

“No, listen,” Strider says. “I do, y’know, appreciate it. It’s just… weird, y’know? I get that you care and all, but you’re, like, all up in my shit all the time.”

Your shoulders slump. 

But Strider’s not done. His next words take longer to come out. “And the weird part is that sometimes I like it. It’s like, you know, someone… gives a shit. Like…”

He trails off. You force yourself to keep fucking quiet for once. 

“So, the nightmare I had,” he continues, swallowing forcefully. “I don’t wanna get into it, not too much, but, uh… my mom was in it, and Bro, and shit. It was, y’know, wack, like dreams always are, but like… they never really gave that many shits, did they? Not in the dream, but in real life. It was just, Dave, do this, be that, shit like that. I don’t know. God, fuck, this is making it sound really Freudian and that’s not the way it is- I swear to god, if you tell Rose about this conversation, I will end you, are we clear?”

You can’t bring yourself to answer. That doesn’t stop him.

“I’m just trynna piece it all together. Sometimes it just… feels weird. Okay? Like, if I’m just here, chilling, and you’re all buzzing around me like a bee. And it's not even, like… I don't know why it bothers me, 'cos I honestly don't care if you're there, ecen though I'm always bitching about it. I think it's like- like I was wrong before, about it. But now I think… like, I'm… y'know?"

He is trying so fucking hard right now to not say what he's feeling. He's such a dumb fuck. Even someone as verbally flatulent as him can't get it out. 

But you think you understand. You take a single, tentative step back towards the bed.

Strider takes a deep breath in through his nose. “I’m trying. And I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry too,” you say. “If I was suffocating you. It’s… I don’t know. Fuck. It’s been a long time since I got to spend time with someone that isn’t an apathetic six-year-old. Someone alive. And I've never really had a friend before, so I tried to… I mean, it’s really hard to talk to you, sort of. Like, on one hand, it feels like I’ve known you forever, but then, like, it also feels like… I don’t know. I keep trying to understand and- I can’t fucking say help you anymore, but it’s true! I was just alone for so long and now you're here and it feels like it's up to me to make sure that you stay.”

There’s quiet. Just long enough for panic to start clawing at your chest. Why would you say something like that? Fucking clingy-ass bitch. If he thought you wanted to fuck him before-

“Yeah,” Strider says. “Thanks for doing my laundry.”

You feel your expression soften, and all the tension leaves your body in a rush of relief. “...That’s really the fucking thing you decided to focus on?”

“Well, it has helped,” Strider mumbles. You slide back into the bed, flush to him. He’s really warm.

“...So we’re still friends?” you ask. He snorts.

“We weren’t ever not friends,” he says. The game sits in the menu screen in front of you, music playing gently under all of the thoughts floating around the room. You soak them up and try to understand them one by one. At some point, Strider clears his throat. “And, uh… I never thanked you for those painkillers you gave me that one time.”

“You remember that?” you ask. It feels like an eternity ago now, before he could see you. But it's only been a month, somehow.

“Yeah,” he says. “That was you, right?”

You breathe in and out. “It was.”

“Thank you,” he says. “I needed them.”

Now there’s another feeling in the room. One of comparative unease that wasn’t there before. You sit there in silence for a few moments longer, and then you ask, “where do all the wounds come from?”

Strider tenses. “I told you. Life stuff. Training. Practice.”

“What practice?” you ask. “Band? Somehow I doubt that, unless they’ve started to replace the instruments with chainsaws.”

Strider wheezes.

But he still doesn’t say anything.

You elbow him in the side. He shoves you back. “Hold on. I’m getting to it.”

“Get to it faster before you pass out and this whole fucking ‘candid feelings-jam moment’ disappears into the anus of history,” you urge.

“That’s not how the saying goes,” he says. “This isn’t easy.”

“Nothing is,” you urge. “Tell me.”

Strider stops in his tracks, closing his eyes behind the lenses of his shades. He looks at you, deep and serious. It’s like being pierced to the core, like he’s testing you, that feeling of being seen- it permeates you, even though you still can't see his eyes. And then, slowly, he takes a deep breath, and he says, “when I turned seven, Bro gave me a tiny fake katana for my birthday, and he said that I had to learn how to be a man.

“He would take me up to the roof - the hotter the sun was any given day, the better - and he’d… he’d demonstrate all these attack moves and how to execute. And I… was both the trainee, and the training dummy.”

He stops for just a second to gather his thoughts. Long enough for his words to sink in. And when you realize what he's saying, your neck twinges with pain from long ago.

Strider continues. “He never really, like, taught me. He just kinda took his sword and kicked me around for a while and then he said we were done. I wasn’t learning anything. But he did it at least a couple of times a week. I sorta got used to it. And the one time I told Mom, she yelled at him so loud that I couldn’t sleep and then he-”

He takes a shuddering breath.

“I don’t know what he said to her to convince her, but she didn’t shout at him about it again. And he kept doing it and training me, and giving me new swords after he broke all the previous ones. And then, when I was ten, he started setting up these training exercises around the house, where he would do shit like put broken glass in my food or put a knife where the cereal box usually was in the cabinets.

“I really tried to be like, a warrior or whatever it was he wanted me to be. Like, I really tried. I tried to practice on my own, and I tried to fight back when he was training me. But I couldn’t do it. And I, like, really tried, like I went all out. And I learned to cook and hide snacks in my room in places he wouldn’t find them and carry swords around so I’d always be ready.”

“You didn’t tell anyone?” you ask, a little desperately.

“No, I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t know any better,” Strider whispers. “I think I kinda thought that was just the way that dads were to their kids.”

You want to say something to make him shut up, but you find yourself unable. In your head, you run through the memories of when you were a kid - in elementary school - and you had to figure out how the stove worked and arrange everything in places you would easily find them, because if the house wasn’t clean by the time your uncle got home, it was your fault.

“But then, even after I did understand,” Strider admits. “I, like, idolized him. I thought he was the ideal human. But I think I always sorta knew that wasn’t true. That’s why I didn’t tell anyone. So yeah. That’s, uh… how I got these scars.”

He tries to smirk, but it fades when he sees the way you’re looking at him. He doesn’t meet your eyes.

“You wanted to know,” he says.

“I’m sorry,” you say. “I… God, I thought that asshole was doing something, but I didn’t want to believe it. He still does it, right?”

Strider nods. “Ok, look, cool. Now you know. Can I… go to sleep now?”

You desperately want to say something to erase it. Something perfectly heartfelt and thought-out to make all of the shit he went through disappear. Anything to make this fucking pain disappear. But there’s just nothing. You move back and take his laptop from Strider’s thighs. He slides under the blanket.

“Karkat,” he says, and you stop to listen. “Let’s not talk about this in the morning, okay? I don’t… want to think about it again.”

“Okay,” you respond automatically. But you'll bring it up at some point, later. You have to do something. You can't let what happened to you happen to him.

Strider pulls his blanket up to his nose and snuggles into it. You stand up and slip through the door. Time to disable some traps.

…

You forgot how much you hate being alone.

With Aradia functionally gone and Strider spending even more time away from home than he used to - checking up on Aradia at least twice every day - you feel… terrible, honestly. 

The house feels more claustrophobic than ever before, except maybe in that short period of time between your uncle moving out and Aradia showing up, all those years ago. It’s been so long that you barely remember it, except for the mind-numbing pain, the stinging in your chest. And your neck.

Oh, yeah, also, turns out you can’t really sit still to read anymore, because it fucks your neck up real fucking bad. And actually just sitting on the couch watching TV hurts as well. So really, there’s nothing here for you.

You’ve already devoured all of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air twice. Most of your second viewing was on Strider’s laptop while he slept. You’ve been able to work through a large number of movies and shows on Netflix using his earbuds. Time passes a little faster when you don’t have to exist in this reality, when someone else’s reality absorbs you for a little while. You guess some things do stay the same. Books, VHS, this. They all serve the same need.

That is, of course, the need of lonely ghosts stuck inside their houses to feel a little less insane.

The snow is still falling outside gently. The blanket of white on the ground gets thicker every day. When you’re not burning through entertainment on Strider’s laptop, you’ve taken to watching the thick snowflakes float down through the window. How long has it been since you touched snow? 

The front door slams. Oh, here comes the crapshoot. Is it the completely terrible tall asshole or the slightly more tolerable tall asshole?

You stand up from the couch and lean around the corner. It’s Strider. Thank fuck. He's got a nondescript white plastic bag in hand. When he sees you, he smiles and holds it up.

"Bro's home," you tell him. Immediately, the smile vanishes. Tense, he climbs the stairs and slams the attic door behind him. You follow.

When you phase through the door, Strider's put the plastic bag on the bed. 

"What's in there?" you ask, stepping closer. You peek into the bag. Just a brown box.

"Shoes," Strider responds matter-of-factly.

"Shoes?" you ask sharply. "What, just fucking shoes? What for?"

"For Aradia," Strider responds, zipping his hoodie up. "Girl's been barefoot for over a century. Can't imagine that's nice in this fuckin' climate."

Oh. "Did she ask you to buy some for her?"

"Oh, nah. It's just, like, a gift," Strider explains. He pulls the box out of the bag and pops the lid open. "Check it."

You peer into the bag. Inside, two tiny black sneakers. Both have repeating skull-and-crossbones patterns on the sides of them. Strider closes the lid again.

"These are pirate-themed, obviously, but they didn't have any dino ones and I just kinda thought she'd like the bones," he explains. A strange sense of dread drowns him out, growing in your chest. You force it down and push it away. Whatever it is, it doesn't matter now. Strider places the box back in the bag. "Figured I'd buy something more useful than just viddy-games with all the dough Mom left me. So, uh…”

“I hope she likes them,” you force yourself to interject.

Strider smiles. “Yeah. Me too. I'll go give these to her and check up on her and all. Aradia. Not my dead mom. See ya!"

And he's gone again. He hops down the stairs, careful in his movements - more graceful than you've ever been - and vanishes again. The back door barely creaks. You go to the kitchen and watch him vanish into the woods.

Great. More fucking solitude. You step down the stairs, go back to the living room, sit down, and just…

wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! hope you liked it.
> 
> before y'all leave i have to give my thanks to all of you!! i got an enormous amount of comments on the last chapter and i'm really happy to see that so many of you are still here and reading, even though i ghosted (hee hee) you so thoroughly between chapters 8 and 9.
> 
> i'm trying to move away from trying to write a Perfect Fanfic in favour of getting more chapters out, because i do want to see this fic through. all of your comments and feedback help me a ton. i'm really glad i've been able to connect with so many people and i hope you'll like what i have planned!
> 
> the rest of this year might be kind of busy for me because of school'n'shit, so i'm not sure when the next update will be ready. it'll be longer than two weeks, that's for sure. i'll be back! see you on the other side.


	11. All Good Devils

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> remember at the start of the prologue when i said this fic would be 5-10 chapters long? well that was a BIG FAT LIEEEEE

One Friday, Bro leaves town for the weekend. He supposedly has a few shows in Los Angeles. You hope to god you’ll never have to find out what those shows entail.

Strider comes home from school with Rose in tow. You hear them come in over the whirr of the washing machine in the laundry room. They’re in the doorway when you step out into the hall. It’s snowing outside, and it shows- they’re both soaked.

Rose is taking off her jacket. Today, she’s is clad in a black band tee - at least you assume it's a band tee, though you don’t recognize the logo - and a long navy skirt. Her boots come up high enough to be hidden in its hem. Her headband is matching the skirt.

Rose's interest in the "science of ghosts" is still going strong. Any progress she's made recently, though, has been invisible to you. It just kind of seems like she's trying to write a biography about you, based on her "séance" questions.

She’s also been interviewing Aradia, but Aradia hasn’t been a big fan of that without you around to translate. ‘Tap once for yes, twice for no’ is a useful system, but it doesn’t really work for interviews. Strider told you they’ve adopted three taps for ‘complicated question, ask again later’ as an supplement, but the list for things to ask later growing to uncontrollable proportions. It’s not a sustainable system.

“Right, well, you two have fun,” Strider says. “I’m gonna trek over to the treehouse to check on the girl.”

“She has a name,” you grumble.

“Yeah, a three-syllable name,” Strider says. “Faster to just say ‘the girl.’”

“Ruder, more like," you snark. "Maybe try not being a humongous dickhead for once in your life, you living fucking turd."

“Also, Aradia’s name has four syllables,” Rose interjects, pulling her ghost-analysis notebook from her backpack. Strider shrugs. He gives you a wave and then leaves.

Rose follows you upstairs. Most visits, you'll sit on the bed and she'll be in the desk chair. Occasionally you'll both sit on the bed, or you might lie down while she takes notes at the desk. You're not a fan of that last arrangement; makes you feel like a psychiatrist's patient being diagnosed.

“Alright, Junior Freud, what’s on the agenda today?” you ask, leaning against the attic wall. Rose hums and flips through her notebook, pencil tucked into the space between her middle and ring fingers.

“I’m hoping to make more progress on how ghosts can communicate with the living, so I could speak with Aradia and access her undoubtedly wide field of knowledge,” Rose explains. “I know she knows things I don’t. I just need to get to her to talk to me.”

“She’s not very talkative,” you say.

“I know, I know,” Rose says, crossing her legs and leaning back in the chair. “But I think the first step towards solving that is figuring out what allowed you to be seen and heard by me and Dave. It might also help John and Jade see you, which could in itself be quite a useful exercise. Jade is quite sad at the lack of contact between you, y’know.”

“She is?”

“Oh, for sure,” Rose says. “She says that she wishes she could get to know you. Now, whether that’s because of an interest in the supernatural or simple discomfort with the continued presence of someone she doesn’t know, that’s not for me to say.”

“Right. So she wants us to figure out how to make her see me so that she can fucking have tea parties with me and dress me up in a frilly tutu and shit? I’m thrilled at the prospect,” you respond. Rose makes a huffing sound you know to be her equivalent of laughter.

“Now that you put it that way, so am I,” she responds. “Anyhow, let’s get started. Do you remember the day John, Jade and I came here for the first time?”

“Oh, god, how long ago was that?” you groan. “I remember, sure. I remember that you three were little rascals and you destroyed my property for cheap thrills. Not that you were the first, but still.”

“I recall taking a photograph of you, but you weren’t on it. You’re invisible in mirrors, even to yourself and others who see you. But Dave was able to capture and manipulate your voice. Do you think it would be possible for a camera to also capture you, if the photo was manipulated correctly?”

“How would I know?” you grumble. “I don’t know what Strider did to that recording. You’ll have to ask the bastard himself for the kind of dark magics he employed.”

“Do you have the recording saved?” she asks.

“I don’t,” you say. “It might be on Strider’s laptop. But if it is, it’s not mine.”

“I would have thought him to entrust you with his laptop by now,” Rose says, with this infuriating, knowing smirk on her face. “His mind truly is a complex framework of defense mechanisms.”

“What? Why would he- Look, however close you think we are, you’re probably wrong,” you immediately snap. “He’s just a guy I live with. We’re not that buddy-buddy, alright?”

“Is that so?” Rose asks. “I wouldn’t have expected that, considering how much he talks about you.”

“He what?” you ask. Rose makes another huffing sound, the living leaf blower that she is.

“He seems to value you quite a bit,” she says, taking a break to write something down. You do not want to think about what it is. “One might start to speculate about your relationship.”

“Don’t fucking speculate about anything, you loathsome witch,” you say, sitting up. You can’t deal with this bullshit again. “We don’t even talk. Ever. I hardly know that bastard. Whatever you’re thinking right now, stop it immediately.”

“Mm-hmm,” Rose says smugly. Her eyebrows get higher every second. She writes something down again, and you’re starting to think that notebook’s not just for her notes on ghostlore. Urgh.

“Stop acting like such a smug piece of shit,” you say, crossing your arms. “I’m serious. Me and Strider aren’t even friends. Not even close. Clearly- I mean, he’s not here right now, is he? He doesn’t care. He’s busy hanging out with Aradia. As it turns out, she’s just fine with him replacing me and now neither of them need me anymore, so, y’know, even if I thought either of them cared, I was wrong!”

That does shut Rose up. Even if you start regretting the words as soon as you say them. The look she’s giving you now isn’t one of superiority. It’s worse; it’s pity. You scoff and look away.

“Ah,” she eventually says, and you hear the scribbling sound of pencil lead on paper. “You’re jealous.”

“I am not jealous!” you snap.

“You’re absolutely jealous,” Rose says. “You’re scared that Dave and Aradia won’t need you anymore, and you think they’re replacing you with each other. You perceive it as a threat. You wish they paid less attention to each other and more attention to you. That’s jealousy. Anxious jealousy.”

“Fuck you, it’s not!” you continue. “It’s not jealousy. If I was jealous, I would- I’d know! I know what jealousy feels like, Lalonde!”

“Pulling out the surname again. Listen, Karkat, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m kind of a psychology nerd,” Rose says.

“I’m fucking aware,” you say. “That doesn’t mean you can’t be wrong.”

“I know,” she says. “I’m often wrong. But not about something this obvious. Stop redirecting your anger towards the messenger and start working through it.”

“No,” you say. “Fuck you.”

“Well, sure, you can also let it fester and then suffer the consequences when you find that you’ve damaged your relationship with both Dave and Aradia irreparably,” Rose says, fully back in her smug persona. She twirls her pencil around. “Up to you.”

“You do not get to pull this manipulative routine with me, dickhead,” you say. “This is not a psychotherapy session. I’m not here to have my mind probed.”

“Fascinating choice of words,” she says. “Hey, while we’re on the topic, why do you always call Dave by his surname?” 

“Because… why not?” you say. “He’s a douche. He deserves it.”

“He’s a douche, so you deny him the right of being called by his name?” she asks, smiling. “Not even his name. His first name.”

“No, it’s-” you say. “It’s a question of principle!”

“Which principle?” she prods.

“The one where I call him Strider, end of discussion!” you shout.

Rose raises her eyebrows. “I see why he loves to tease you. Let’s get back on track. Alright. You’re not here to have your mind probed. Why do you think you are you here, then?”

“I’m here because-” you say, and stop when you realize what the question was. “...What? I can’t leave. You know that.”

“Not the house,” Rose says. “Why are you still here?”

“...How about you try using words that make more sense instead of less.”

“On Earth,” Rose says. “Why are some people ghosts and others aren’t? Why are you a ghost, and why are you still _here_?”

“God,” you say. “Fuck. As if that’s not a question I’ve asked myself a dozen times.”

“Do you have any ideas?” Rose asks.

“No,” you say. “Well, back in the day, before the Striders, Aradia had a hypothesis we talked about sometimes.”

“Really?” Rose asks, serious. “What was it?”

“It’s been a while,” you sigh and drop your head back, trying to recollect your thoughts after the disaster this conversation has been so far. 

“Okay, so… we never figured out a lot, obviously, because we didn’t have that many reference points, but the crux of Aradia’s theory was that ghosts are born when a person dies without a place to go. Not ‘no place to go’ as in ‘no belief in an afterlife.’ She made that part clear. She sort of implied that once you die, you’re meant to go wherever you ‘truly belong,’ whatever that means. If you don’t have a place you belong, you become a ghost.”

“And if you don’t find your place even then, you fade away altogether. Right?” Rose asks. You nod. She writes something down. “If the point of ghosting is that a ghost is trying to find the place they truly belong, why are ghosts tied to the location of their deaths?”

“I don’t think ghosting has a point,” you say, lifting up your head. “Why would it? There’s no authority that decides the rules. It’s just the way of the world. It’s like evolution.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Rose insists. “If there’s no authority to set the rules, what determines where you ‘truly belong?’”

You go quiet for a moment, trying to run through the things you know about it. “...Aradia used to call it Home. With a capital H, I think. I don’t know if it’s different for everyone or if it’s the same every time. I don’t know if she’s ever seen a ghost actually find it.”

Rose leans her face into the palm of one of her hands. “Clearly this hypothesis isn’t very well developed.”

“Do you have a better idea?” you snap.

“At least I’m trying,” she shoots back. You contain your frustration as best you can. 

Rose stays for an additional half-hour or so. You manage to avoid conversations about Aradia and Strider, for the most part. Instead, you just debate on the idea of Home and speculate about the potential construction of the universe. You don’t find the discussion to be particularly fruitful.

Then, Rose gets up, flipping through her notes. “This has been more enlightening than most of our sessions.”

“We don’t have the same definition of enlightening,” you say.

“Well, believe me when I tell you, this is some very useful material. I’ll do some analysis, and I think we might have grounds for another experiment soon,” she says. Halfway out the door, she stops and turns. “Karkat. Please talk to Dave about your feelings. It’s worked so far, hasn’t it?”

“Get out,” you say. She smiles in an infuriating way and closes the attic door behind her.

…

Jealous. Hah! Jealous! Rose thinks you’re a kindergartener mad that your baby sister is getting more attention from your parents. She thinks you’re a monkey seeing another monkey get a grape instead of a cucumber. You pace back and forth in the laundry room. 

Jealous. Jealous of a little girl who died of hypothermia in the middle of the woods almost two centuries ago and a guy who gets beaten up by his brother on a weekly basis. Right, because why wouldn’t you be jealous of such luxurious lifestyles? 

According to Madame Brain Surgeon, your mental processes are on par with an infant or a flatworm or a politician or something. You perceive your roommate as “a threat!” A threat! You’re a ghost! How could he threaten you?

The floorboards creak in the hallway and you stop pacing. A few moments later, the laundry room door creaks open and Strider peeks in. He lifts his eyebrows at you. “Hey, dude. What are you doing?”

“Seething,” you respond. Strider makes a face.

“Well, alright then,” he says. “I’m gonna go upstairs. Check Twitter or something.”

“Hey, Strider,” you say when he’s heading out. “Why don’t you let me use your laptop?”

Strider stops and turns to you with a questioning look. “What?”

“Why don’t you let me use your laptop?” you repeat. “Don’t you trust me with it?”

“What?” he repeats, laughing breathily. “I do let you use my laptop. You watch Netflix with it, right?”

“Yeah, but you don’t let me do anything else with it,” you say. “Like… it’s your laptop.”

“Yeah, well,” he says. “Yeah. It _is_ my laptop. I need it at school and stuff.”

“What about when you’re not at school?” you insist. “Or when you’re out in the woods? Or at John’s place? You haven’t ever let me use it then. You don’t leave it open. It’s only during the night, like you think you being in the room, even asleep, is somehow, like, surveillance or something-”

“Hey, no. That’s bullshit and you know it,” Strider says, eyebrows furrowing. “You’ve never asked. You think I would just have assumed that you wanted to use it?”

“You _assumed_ I wanted you to turn that VHS tape into a DVD! You _assumed_ that I wanted to-” Shit. That was your only example. No, wait! “You leave the TV on downstairs whenever you can! Even sometimes when you go to school!”

“Yeah, so that you and Aradia can spend time together,” Strider says.

“Oh, and we’re spending so much fucking time together now, aren’t we?” you shout. “Much more than you and her are, for sure!”

“Oh, go fuck yourself,” Strider says. “Whatever! So I don’t let you use my laptop a lot of the time, so what? It’s my laptop. You can’t make me share it with you.”

“Why? Because you’re scared I’ll find something on it that’ll make you feel uncool? Grow up!” you yell.

“Why are you so angry about this?” he asks, desperately. “I can have privacy, okay? That doesn’t make me a wuss! People have things they don’t want to share. You have shit like that! You still refuse to say that you’re gay out loud!”

“That’s not true!” you say.

“Yeah, it is! Name one time you’ve said it out loud,” he presses.

“Well- I don’t want to! I don’t- I don’t want to!” you say, dumbly.

“And I don’t want you to use my laptop. Is that so fucking terrible?” Strider counters. You open your mouth to respond, and don’t find a comeback ready. Strider frowns. “So maybe I don’t want you in on every aspect of my life. That’s not a grave fucking insult. It’s called being a normal human. Remember when we talked about not suffocating me? Hey, douchebag, I think it’s time to put that lesson to use.”

You try again to find something to say, something clever and rude to shut him up. And again, you come up empty. You cross your arms. “Just go away, like you always do.”

Strider gives you a wounded look. “Alright. Fine.”

He slams the laundry room door closed. The house shakes down to it’s foundation.

For a few minutes, you stand there, unmoving. Part of you is waiting for him to come back. He doesn’t. Eventually, you back up and hop up to sit on the lid of the washing machine.

That thing Rose said echoes in your head. The one about how festering in your anger will… “irreparably damage” your relationship with Strider.

You hate the way she says it, like she’s so smug and wise, like she’s uncovered some hidden truth about the nature of reality.

You tilt your head back and lean against the wall. It feels unfair that she was right.

There’s a spiderweb in the corner of the room. You can see the spider, tiny, slowly crawling across the wallpaper. You watch it wandering aimlessly for a while, waiting for something to fly into its web.

You think about everything Strider said.

You think.

If you were in his position, if you had someone buzzing around you who always wanted to know what you were doing, no matter how much you liked them, would you want them to see it all? To see everything, the things you’d told them, the things you hadn’t?

And you think.

How many things are there in your past you’ve never had to share? How many things are there in his past that he doesn’t want to share?

…

You get up to go apologize.

The stairs creak under your weight. You open the door. Strider’s nowhere to be found, but the laptop lid is open. You step closer.

The background is a picture of Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff. There’s a blank bar for the password in the center. The username above it reads “Dave.” There’s a Post-It note pasted onto the keyboard. The red pen that the text was written with is lying on the desk next to it.

went to check on aradia

the password is coolguy6969

cya l8r alig8r  
(thats not part of the password)

dave

You peel the Post-It note off and read it over a few more times. You stare at the keys and at the blank white password bar.

You close the laptop and sit down on the bed. 

…Nothing to do now, you guess, besides wait for him to come back. You see the screen of the laptop fade into darkness across the room. It keeps whirring. The sound of it is your only company.

Strider comes home a while later. You hear one of the doors slam closed and his footsteps up the stairs. The attic door squeaks open.

“...Got tired of that laptop real fast, huh?” he says when he sees you on the bed and the laptop, closed, on the desk.

“I didn’t use it,” you respond, looking up at him. Strider looks confused. You sit up. “It’s not my laptop.”

Strider stands in the doorway, staring quietly. You can almost see the gears whirring in his head. He searches your face for something - dishonesty, maybe. His face doesn’t change, but he shrugs, goes to grab his laptop and takes it downstairs. You get the feeling you did something wrong. Maybe you should have actually apologized.

…

“How’s Aradia doing?” you ask, as you do every day, when Strider and you are downstairs. Strider is peeling the plastic cover off of a microwave meal.

“Well, y’know,” he says. “About the same, I think. I have, y’know, a hard time figuring her out. But I think she’s fine. She seemed to really like those shoes I gave her. Or, like, she wears them, anyway.”

You nod, staring at the floor. “When do you think she’ll be able to go out on her own again?”

Strider taps the numbered buttons on the microwave and blows a raspberry. “I don’t know. I think she still has a little bit of a limp, but I honestly can’t tell. We probably need to get Rose in to figure it out.”

You hum. “She’s planning another experiment.”

“Yeah?” Strider asks. “Why’s that?”

“She’s making progress on how ghosts work, I think,” you explain. “At least I assume she is, if I read right between the lines of her insults towards me.”

“I guess you know what she has to deal with, then,” he snarks. You punch him in the side.

“There’s another thing, too,” you tell him while he’s on the couch watching House Hunters and eating his stinky terrible Panang Curry. He hums a question through a mouthful of rice. You say, “Rose was wondering if it would be possible to do to a photo what you did to that audio clip of me talking.”

Strider frowns and swallows. “What clip?”

“The one you recorded before you could see me,” you say. “The one that caused us to see each other.”

“Ohh,” Strider says. “Oh, damn. I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know if I remember what I even did to that clip anymore. And, like, it hardly sounds like you anyway. It’s scratchy and weird and shit.”

“But it’s legible,” you insist. “Would it be possible to get a photo of me or Aradia, if you fucked with in the right way?”

“Well, no,” Strider says, chewing a piece of chicken. “Not with a modern digital camera, anyway. If you’re not visible on those, then you’re not visible on those. If they don’t capture you, they don’t. Once they’re on the computer, there’s no way to, like, extract the ghostness from the pixels in Photoshop.”

“What about with another kind of camera?” you ask. “Like the normal ones you use.”

Strider stops and thinks. “...Maybe. Probably not, but I’m not sure.”

…

“Winter vacation is coming up. Like, less than a week from now, coming up.” Strider says this to you at one in the morning, when he’s lounging on his bed, watching something on his laptop. One earbud is on his chest. He’s wearing socks and sweatpants to bed. What a freak. You know the house is old and a strong breeze could knock it over, but still.

“So?” you ask. You, in turn, are sitting on a blanket he so graciously bestowed down to you like a medieval nobleman throwing a burnt piece of bread into a mass of peasants.

“I’m gonna be home the whole time,” he explains. “John, Rose and Jade are all heading to different places. Rose’s mom is taking her and Roxy to NYC. Jade and John have some relatives down south in places with less a more tolerable climate. They’re all leaving in a couple days. So… I’m gonna be on my own here. Gonna have more time to hang out with Aradi-”

“Yeah, that’s just what you need, isn’t it?” you growl.

“-a and you,” he finishes. You instantly feel embarrassed. The look he gives you is one of subdued rage. He taps the spacebar on his computer and sits up. His voice isn’t angry. It’s just tense. “What the fuck is your problem?”

“What problem?” you ask. “I don’t have a problem.”

“No, clearly you do,” he insists. “You’ve been acting like such a fucking douchebag this past, what, like, week or so. What’s the deal? Like, you always curse and yell and shit, but now you’re like, serious about it.”

“I am not- I do not! That’s such a gross fucking misrepresentation of me!” you say. You can see the way he turns his head like he’s rolling his eyes at you. You stand up, quick enough to make your head ache. “No, listen. You’re the one being an asshole. You never talk to me anymore! It’s like I stopped existing!”

“Uh, wrong,” he says. “That is just not true.”

“Name one time we’ve hung out since- ever since-” you try, but whatever you’re saying, it doesn’t come out. “You’re just so- you never take me seriously, you never listen, you don’t-”

“What?” Strider asks. “Jesus, how can you think that?”

“Because it’s true!” you shout. A dry, stinging ache shoots up your spine and throat, and you break into coughs. They’re the kind of coughs that make you feel like you’re choking, like you’re about to collapse. You double over, leaning hard against the wall and trying not to collapse.

“Karkat?” Strider asks. You stumble backwards, hacking and gasping. When you finally catch your breath, you find him staring at you in something like distress. You throw your book onto the floor, unable to say anything. It makes a loud noise and the floorboards creak. You stomp through the door.

You phase through the door and find Bro standing at their base. You freeze. He’s looking up, through you, at the door of his room. You can’t read his expression. Then he disappears and the door of his room clicks closed.

You relax and lean hard against the wall. Your head aches badly. You think you’re just going to sulk in the laundry room tonight.


	12. Sleep in the Heat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one's a doozy. you might need to sit down for this.

The walls creak quietly. You sit on the washing machine in silence, arms wrapped around your knees. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!

You repeatedly drop your head back against the wall and lift it back up again. It makes a soft knocking sound against the plaster. The pain of impact in your skull travels down and stings sharply at your neck and spine.

He's such a moron! Honestly! What a fucking douchebag, Jesus Christ- that fucking guy is nothing but trouble. He's just- he's just a dumbass. He doesn't get you. Doesn’t get anything. All he thinks about is how to be cool and how to act like he doesn't have feelings. What an ass.

He thought you weren't serious before about the cussing and yelling. Right. He just knows you so fucking well, right? He knows you so well. So not. No, no, no. If he- just. If you could ever just-

You wish that he would just listen, for once, and change his mind instead of- instead of whatever it is that he normally does. No, you wish you had never said anything at all, actually! Curse Lalonde and her terrible, shitty advice ruining everything. This is all her fault, her fault and Strider’s fault and-

Not Aradia’s fault. Aradia didn’t do anything. She’s a victim here, you and her both, getting fucked by the whims of a fucking knobhead in shades. Everything you do, he turns against you. You’ve done nothing but help him and he doesn’t care. He could leave any second, he could leave - he would - and you would still be here, behind, with no way to contact Aradia and just… alone.

You groan out loud and place your head into your hands. You don’t have a problem. There just is not a problem! No, actually, there is a problem, and it’s with him. He didn’t accept your apology, when you didn’t use his laptop. That was an apology and he ignored it. That’s on him, right? He didn’t listen. He decided to make this a problem. All of this is his fault.

Yeah, all of it. It’s on him. You didn’t do anything wrong.

The more you focus on the feeling of absolution, the better it feels. Vindication. You’re in the right. Everything you’re feeling is justified and he- this is all on him. All of it! That fucker. This is it. No more caring about him. No more doing his laundry. No more movie nights. Nothing.

You wish you could make yourself vanish faster, so you wouldn’t have to spend your time in this house anymore. Not with him.

…

You sit in the laundry room for a long time. What else are you going to do? You can’t go in the attic. You’re not going to willingly spend more time with Strider than strictly necessary. He doesn’t deserve to be graced by your presence. You sit there, arms wrapped around your knees, for hours. You slip into an exhausted ghost trance and stare at the chips in the wallpaper.

It gets lighter and lighter outside every time you glance through the tiny laundry room window.

Then, you hear the staircase creaking. The water starts running and the clanking of the pipes becomes audible from the bathroom on the other side of the wall. It’s morning. Strider’s washing up, probably. You guess he didn’t even care that you weren’t around.

Typical.

The water shuts off and, some minutes later, the door of the bathroom creaks. You lean your head against the wall and try to hear the footsteps in the hallway. They’re there. He’s probably going in the kitchen to get some chips or Oreos or something like that.

You haul yourself up and all your joints give faint cracks of complaint from being still for such a long time. The door of the laundry room creaks when you open it. For once, you don’t try to hide the sound. The hallway is lit with dim morning light, blanching out the already faint colors of the walls and furniture. You hear Strider in the kitchen before you see him.

He’s hunched over the counter, pouring a truly colossal amount of syrup over a pair of toaster waffles on a paper plate. You have real plates. He’s just too much of a fucking douchebag to actually use them. You lean against the doorframe. “Are you going to put sprinkles on that, too, you fucking cretin?”

Strider stops for a second and then continues working on the waffles without responding. You step closer.

“Hello, Earth to living dumpsterfire?” ...Still no response. You walk closer. “Oh, you’re playing the silent treatment game with me? Are you too good to acknowledge my presence now?”

You stand next to him. He doesn’t even look up at you. Just takes the plate and goes to sit down at the table. Your blood starts fucking boiling. 

“Hey, asshole, are you listening? I’m right here! I know you can hear me!” you yell. Strider picks a waffle up into his hand - his fingers get covered in syrup, but he doesn’t seem to care - and takes a bite. You groan and kick the foot of the chair he’s sitting on. It shifts under him, and he ignores it. “Have you gone blind or deaf or both?”

Strider takes another bite of his fucking waffle. You pace around the kitchen.

“So I do all of the things for you that I have and you give me the cold fucking shoulder because of one fucking- what are you, pretending that you can’t hear me? I’m a ghost, not a moron! I know you know I’m here! Stop ignoring me!”

Strider slowly lowers his shoulders and sighs. Something bubbles up in your chest- anger, frustration, you don’t know. It’s painful, cloying, almost a wound that feels like it’s dragging you down to hell. This fucking guy doesn’t care. Eats his waffles and doesn’t listen and pretends you don’t exist.

“Are you listening?” you ask. Strider pushes back his chair and stomps towards the fridge. You’re sure you saw him glance at you for just a moment, and it only makes you angrier. He pulls the door open and you stuff yourself in between him and the shelves of the fridge, waving your hands in his face. “Look! I’m right here! Can you see me? Yeah, it’s me, Karkat. Still remember me or did you already forget?”

You can see him fighting the urge to look at you. He looks at the door of the fridge and at the top shelf, everywhere except at you, staunchly avoiding the direction you’re standing in. He reaches in past you and pulls out a large bottle of apple juice.

He steps away from the fridge without closing the door. You would expect that anyway, under normal circumstances, but his hand almost lingers on the door, as if he’s considering closing it, and his eyes are locked on you for the first time the whole morning. But, whatever it is that’s going on behind those dark ass lenses, he decides against it. He steps away to pour some juice for himself. You choke and shove the fridge door shut without looking at it. “You’re an asshole!”

You see him shake his head just barely, like he’s trying not to give you the satisfaction of seeing his reaction. He twists the cap off the juice.

“No, fuck you, you are!” you say. “Fuck you! Fuck you! You can stand there and act like you can't hear me all you want, but you aren't getting rid of me! I'm going to be here forever, regardless of whether or not you know it! I was here before you and I'll be here after you fucking die! It doesn't matter to me! Nothing does!"

Strider suppresses a frown and his muscles grow tense, as if he’s holding something in. He turns the bottle around and you see him notice something. The tension in his muscles grows tighter. He peels a Post-It note off of the juice bottle and holds it up to read. You step closer to read over his shoulder.

leftmost top cupboard.

You’ve seen notes like this before. You know what they mean. Strider drops the note on the counter and you watch him walk through the kitchen, to the cupboard closest to the door. You see him bracing himself before he opens it and dodging the flood of smuppets and old kitchenware that falls out when he does.

There's another piece of paper in the pile. He unburies himself from under the puppet dongs and grabs it. Fear fills his face as he does. Whatever it says on that note, it’s not good. He scrambles up. 

Emotions rush through your head while you watch him pull himself up by the counter. You grab his arm when he goes to push past you. "You can't go."

He looks at you for a brief moment, shorter than a heartbeat, and then looks away. Forcefully pulls himself from your grip and walks towards the door. You step in between him and the hallway and spread your arms to block his path.

"No," you repeat. "Whatever he wants from you, he’s not getting it. I'm not letting you go out there to let that sociopath beat your ass in. You are not going!”

He steps closer and, with barely any effort, shoves you to the side. Your back hits the doorframe. There’s a coldness to his face reminiscent of his brother, masking all of the terror you know he’s trying to hide. "I thought it didn't matter to you."

He's down the hallway and at the front door with his jacket on before you can stop him, moving with what you know is a twisted sort of determination. You whirl around, trying to say the words you need to keep him here, but you find none. He slams the front door closed behind him. You speedwalk to the front window and see him get in his car. He drives away without so much as another look.

You linger there before you return to the kitchen. The note on the counter reads:

the usual place. now.

be there.

Ominous piece of shit. 

You grab the note and walk back to the front window. Staring at the tire tracks that trail down the hill in the direction that he drove off. The snow is slowly filling up the square plot where his car blocked it from hitting the ground.

You can’t believe you let him leave. You know what happens to him out there, right? You know what happens. That piece of shit motherfucker beats him up, and then he comes home bruised and fucked up and holes up in the bathroom for an hour to lick at his wounds, and doesn’t sleep all night while pretending that you can’t tell every movement of his muscles makes him wince.

And you’re letting it happen.

Why couldn’t he just… not go? He hasn’t gone for weeks before now. Ever since Aradia… Ever since Aradia got moved to the treehouse, you don’t think he’s gone a single time. Maybe he has once or twice. But this time you had the chance to stop him, and you failed.

...Whatever, right? Whatever! If he wants to die, that’s his problem. You told him to not go, you tried to stop him. He shouldn’t have ignored you all morning if he wanted you to rescue him somehow. What a fucking- he’s so fucking- fuck!

You slam your head against the wall hard enough to make it feel like the world is spinning for a few seconds. The pressure of tears builds behind your eyes. You grit your teeth and force it down. Everything sucks so much. You punch the wall. Jolts of pain run through your body. You want to flip a table or fucking break a plate or haunt someone or something.

You stand there, staring out of the window and seething, for fuck knows how long. Not like you have anything better to do. You watch the snow fall and watch the town go about its day. Your muscles tense and relax without your input. Every few minutes, you have to blink away something that may be tears.

You’ve fallen into a trance, staring at the ground, by the time you hear the car approaching. It alerts you immediately, jolting into awareness. You press against the window and watch the red car moving up the hill towards the house. It’s his car. The driving isn’t controlled- the car is swerving and skidding on the ground, like the driver is drunk.

But he’s not drunk. When the car halts and the headlights turn off, you see him open the door and wobble out, bleeding from more places than you can count. His shades are skewed and his face is red and bruised all over. Blood stains his shirt and jacket, leaving ugly, dark red blotches all over him. He stumbles out of the car and falls into the snow onto his stomach. You open the door, but when you open your mouth, sound doesn’t come out.

The cold air whips at your face. You can see his fingers and hands bleeding. He tries to push himself up, but winces and doubles over, holding his abdomen. This is bad. This is so, so bad. You hold yourself up against the doorframe. You can’t go out there and help him. You can’t leave him out there. You can’t help him- not on your own. Is there any way for you to- okay. Fuck.

You turn on your heels and run inside. Up the stairs. The attic is cold and lonely - he left the window open just a crack for some reason. His laptop isn’t on the desk. Of course it’s not. Why would anything ever be easy for you, especially in this fucking situation?

His backpack is on the bed. You tear the zipper open. The laptop is there, blocky and flat. You tear it out as best you can and open the lid. Turn on, motherfucker! You tap in the password. The keys are so weird and clicky. Press enter. Wrong password. Fuck! Try again. coolguy6969. _Welcome, Dave,_ the screen tells you.

A bunch of little icons stare you in the face. Which one of these bastards is Pesterchum. You look over them all. Yellow smiley face. Click on it. Open. Open, open, open, for fuck’s sake, he’s dying in the snow outside!

MY CHUMHANDLE:

turntechGodhead

MOOD:

CHUMMY ✓

You scroll through the chumlist. Where is, where is, where is- here, go-

\-- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering tentacleTherapist [TT] \--

TG: ROSE

TG: ROSE OH MY GOD THIS IS SERIOUS PLEASE RESPOND

TT: What’s the matter?

TG: IT’S KARKAT

TG: HE’S FUCKING HE’S IN THE SNOW OUTSIDE I THINK HES DYING

TT: Wait, how’d he get there? He can’t leave the house.

TG: NOT KARKAT UGH I’M KARKAT IT’S KARKAT AS IN KARKAT IS ME

TG: FUKCK

TG: COME OVER RIGHT NOW AND BRING JOHN AND JADE I NEED HELP

TT: Wait, Dave is in the snow outside?

TT: What’s going on?

TG: I’LL FUCKIGN TELL YOU WHEN YOU GET HEREJ UST FCUGKING COME NOW

TT: We’ll be there ASAP.

\-- tentacleTherapist [TT] ceased being pestered by turntechGodhead [TG] \--

Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. The snow is coming down hard. You whirl around. Rush down the stairs. The door is still open. The house is freezing. He's out there, face down on the ground. You can see him shivering.

The wind is whizzing. He's trying to stand. Slowly, but still trying. You can tell how much pushing himself up against the side of the car is hurting him. This is worse than it's ever been.

"Don't try to move!" you shout. "It'll hurt more! Rose is gonna come with help."

He tries to respond, but whatever he says gets lost in the air on the way to you. You punch the barrier keeping you locked inside and start pacing back and forth. He's hunched over, leaning against the car. You see him trying to talk, but never loudly enough for you to her.

Eventually you see shapes climb the hillside in the snow. "Dave?"

Jade, John and Rose run over. 

"Holy shit," John says. "What the hell happened?"

"We need to get him inside," Rose says. She and John go around either side of him and try to help support his weight. He says something to them quietly.

"Oh, shut up," Jade says. She leans down and wraps his arms around her neck, hauling him up into a half-drag, half-carry. "Hold tight."

“Put me down,” he complains. “I can walk… on my own.”

“If you could walk on your own, you wouldn’t have been faceplanted into the snow for the last ten minutes,” you shout. “Let’s put him on the couch.”

Jade drags him inside. You trail her, trying to get a better look. His hair is riddled with clumps of half-melted white snow. It’s sticking to the face, glued by blood and water. Bruises are forming on his face. His breath is coming in in uneven, labored huffs. He winces every few seconds. His feet scrabble for purchase on the hallway floor. He looks like a strange, bloody blanket, the way he covers Jade completely. “Jade, put me down.”

“Hold on,” Jade grunts. The door clicks closed behind you. She hauls him through the living room door and gently lowers him onto the couch. She’s breathing harshly herself, red-faced. “Alright.”

He winces, tensing his shoulders, and groans. “Fuck. Ow.”

“What the fuck happened?” Rose asks from the doorway.

“Nothing,” he grumbles. “Nothing. Just, uh, an accident.”

“I’ll call 911,” John says, pulling his phone out.

“No! No 911, don’t fucking call anyone. I’m fine.”

“Dave, we can’t take care of you on our own! We need professionals,” Rose says.

“No,” he coughs. “No. I don’t… I don’t have good enough insurance.”

“Oh my god,” you groan. “You’re bleeding out on a fucking couch and developing frostbite! Do you want to call an ambulance or do you want to die?”

“Karkat, I swear to god, I don’t fucking care about anything else right now. I’ll lie here, I’ll let you play doctor, whatever. Just, please, do not call anyone.” He looks at you. His shades just barely hide his eyes, but his eyebrows are deeply furrowed, deeper than you’ve ever seen them. He looks fucking pathetic. “Don’t. Don’t call 911.”

“Well, what the hell are we meant to do?” John pleads. “Jade, you’re going to be a doctor! Examine him or something!”

“A vet!” Jade says, panting. “You think knowing a lot about dog arthritis is going to help right now?”

“It’s better than nothing,” you snarl. “You have to try!”

Jade squeezes her eyes shut, stands up straight, and gets a determined look on her face. She slides onto the floor on her knees. “Alright. Karkat, get some painkillers and a first aid kit and anything else useful that you have. John, get some blankets and help get him warm. Rose, I need you on Google duty, just in case.”

You and John run into the hallway. You go your separate ways. You swerve into the bathroom and pull the cabinet open. The first aid kit, old and abused, is there on the shelf. You grab it. The roll of bandages is almost out, and the Band-Aids are almost out too. The antiseptic is probably out of date, but it’ll have to do. Whip back into the living room.

“...it’s broken?” you hear Rose ask when you rush back in. Jade is on her knees, feeling the bones of his arm.

“I think it might be,” she says, voice shaken with fear. You hand her the first aid kit. She doesn’t see you when she takes it from you. “Thanks. I think we have to bandage it. Fuck, with all these fucking cuts- This antiseptic is almost empty. Do you have any more? Shit. Okay. Hold still, this will sting.”

She takes a cotton swab and wipes down one of the larger cuts on his arm. He tenses and then relaxes again with a strained breath. “Ohh-kay. I’m fine. I’m good.”

“Stay still,” Jade repeats. John comes in with blankets and drops them next to her. She barely gives him a glance. “Thanks. Now, go get an icepack! Karkat, you have ice packs, right? John, get an ice pack and a splint. Rose, look up how to splint a broken arm.”

“On it,” Rose says, tapping on her phone.

It takes you a long while and you’re all busy helping Jade. She enlists you to help hold him still while she uses your antiseptic to clean the cuts. After maybe half an hour of haphazard first aid work, he’s bandaged and half-conscious and on his second tablet of Advil, but definitely writhing in pain less than he was when you started.

Jade is exhausted and her hands have bloodstains on them. She waddles into the bathroom to wash them. John offers to get snacks. Rose follows him, promising to make tea. She assures you she’ll be careful in the kitchen.

It’s just you, now, alone in the living room. You sit on the floor, legs crossed, leaning against the base of the couch and just… staring up at the ceiling. Why the fuck is it that suddenly everything is going wrong? Ever since this motherfucker came here, your life has been nothing but a downward spiral. Complicated and messy and full of pain and loss and bullshit.

...But then, so has his.

You lean harder against the couch. “Sorry I couldn’t help you, Dave.”

“Mmh, it’s okay,” he mumbles quietly. You startle and turn to look at him. Hi face is swollen and covered in ugly marks, and he’s holding the blanket to his chest with his unbroken arm. “You can’t help being a douchebag.”

“I thought you were asleep,” you admit. He gives you a small, crooked smile.

“You think this is the worst I’ve felt?” he asks. You shake your head. He looks at you and then up at the ceiling. “Well, it’s pretty close, to be honest.”

You lean back again and relax. You hear the sound of John and Rose talking in the kitchen, and the sound of running water from the bathroom.

“Hey,” Dave says weakly. “You gonna start calling me Dave now?”

“Maybe,” you say. “But it’s no thanks to you or anything.”

He chortles and suppresses another wince. “Alright, good, because it’s weird.”

“It better be,” you say. He doesn’t respond. Then you say, “sorry. Again.”

“I know you are. Let’s talk about forgiving you when I wake up,” he responds. You scoff, but don’t say anything. The two of you slip back into silence. You feel his broken arm resting against the back of your neck, right at the spot where your spinal cord snapped all those years ago. His hand twitches when it touches you, almost like he wonders whether to pull it away. It being broken seems to make him drop that idea. The muscles relax and press a light weight against you. He hums. “Were you always this warm?”

You reach up to touch your own face. You can’t tell if you’re warm or not.

…

“Right, so, bedrest. Bedrest until the foreseeable future,” Jade says harshly. Dave looks up at her, disgruntled, still lying on the couch.

“Well, sure, doctor’s orders and all, but actually no,” he says. “I can’t.”

“You _have_ to,” she says. She even has her hands on her hips. “You are not getting up from this couch. Karkat is now responsible for not letting you get up from this couch.”

“What, so I have to sleep here?” he asks. “Who’s going to take care of Aradia?”

“Since when was it possible to just _assign_ me to jobs? I’m not a housemaid,” you protest from the doorway, where you and Rose are standing. Jade holds up a hand to shut you up,

“I swear to god, if you move from that couch, Dave, I will beat you up myself and it will hurt a lot more than it does right now.” That shuts him up. It also shuts you up. You’re pretty sure she’s not serious, but if she was, you’d be fucked. Jade sighs. “Alright. Good? Good. Now, I have to go home and walk my dog. Don’t move! And text me if something comes up.”

She whirls around and walks out between you and Rose. Rose watches her go and sighs.

John’s still standing next to the couch. He shrugs and tells Dave, “At least you got beat up today and not, like, tomorrow, so… silver linings, I guess.”

You look at Rose. “What’s that meant to mean?”

“We’re all leaving the state tomorrow morning,” she says. “Winter vacation. One day later and we wouldn’t have been here to help.”

…

You hand Dave his laptop and a prepared cup of Cup Noodles. He grumbles when you place the laptop on his stomach. You don’t know if the sound he lets out is a cough or a sigh. “Well, look at this. The grumbler has become the grumbled.”

“What?” you ask. “Eat, you dumbass.”

“What?” he asks. “No. Not hungry.”

“Listen, bitch,” you say. “If I’m going to be employed on full round-the-clock watch to make sure you don’t sprain a lung trying to lumber your way through the woods, then I’m going to fucking make sure you eat for once in your life. So, eat!”

You shove the Cup Noodles into his face. Reluctantly, he takes them into his free hand and starts drinking from the cup like it’s soda. He smacks his lips. “Tasty.”

“You are disgusting,” you say and plop your ass on the floor next to him.

“One of my arms is in bandages,” he defends, raising his eyebrows. “I can’t use it to eat. And I need the other one to hold the cup.”

“Yeah, and? Still disgusting,” you say. Dave gives you as much of a shrug-type gesture as he can while in the position that he is, and slurps up some more noodles. He sighs. “Hey.”

“What, you nimrod?” you ask.

“I forgive you,” he says. It kind of feels like something inside you clicks.

“Cool,” you say. “Don’t care.”

“Alright. But just so you know, I do,” he says and slurps up some more noodles. The ‘ah’ he lets out is less ‘Coca-Cola commercial’ and more ‘I am incredibly uncomfortable.’ “I’m so sweaty. Get me a fan or something, one that works.”

“I’m not your butler,” you say and back up with your back against the couch again.

“Aw, come on. Be a sweetheart,” he says. “Come on, be my Cathilda. Be young Jeeves. Please?”

“No,” you say.

“Why not?” he asks whinily.

“No!” you repeat, definitely not smiling.


End file.
